March 31, 2001

EL CAJON -- The most panicked words in the first 911 call weren't even meant for the dispatcher.

"Stay down, stay down!" math teacher Bob Rynearson yelled at his students after calmly telling the police about the shots fired at Granite Hills High School.

In all, six calls for help were made from campus on March 22. Two teachers and three students were wounded when a gunman fired on the administration building.

Jason Hoffman, 18, is being held on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

The tapes of the 911 calls were released yesterday, as were the 911 tapes from the shooting at Santana High School on March 5. In that case, a 15-year-old freshman is accused of killing two students and injuring 13 people with a .22-caliber revolver.

In the Granite Hills tapes, students and teachers can be heard either yelling or whispering into their phones.

One of the calls was from the receptionist in that office. After her 911 call went unanswered for three rings, she said, "Oh my God."

After four rings, she gets increasingly frantic. By the sixth ring, when the dispatcher picks up the line, another person in the room is shouting "Holy (expletive)!"

During the call, the dispatcher is told that on-campus police officer Richard Agundez Jr. has taken a suspect into custody. The dispatcher is also told: "I don't know if you need ambulances, but you should probably send them."

Perhaps the most urgent exchange on the tapes came from a male student in a classroom moments after the shooting:

"911."

"Hi, there was just a shooting at Granite Hills High School."

"Do you know where the shots are coming from?"

"What?"

"Do you know where the shots are coming from?"

"From over by the bathroom. Hurry we need people. Seriously, there's -- "

"We have officers on the way, OK?"

"There's (expletive) people shot."

"You need to get out of the way then, OK?"

"We're in a (expletive) classroom."

"OK, you need to stay down then, OK? We have officers on the way."

"They need to hurry up because there's people running down the halls with (expletive) blood coming out of their (expletive) heads."

"OK then, you need to get down and stay down and out of the way. We have officers on the way."

"All right."