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# Peace vigil planned for Monday
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/peace-vigil-planned-for-monday/
- Published: 2001-12-15T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-22T22:32:00.000Z
- Author: Andrew Fixmer
- Tags: Education, Malibu, #archive-import

*Vigil prompted by teen deaths*

Tragic teen deaths seem to plague Santa Monica year after year.

Last month, Santa Monica High School student Deanna Maran was stabbed to death at a party in West Los Angeles. At the beginning of the school year, a recent Olympic High School graduate was shot in Venice. And last year, three Santa Monica-Malibu Unified high school students died tragically, one from suicide.

Now a group of teachers, students, city officials and several community organizations are addressing the community’s losses.

A “Community Peace Vigil” has been organized for Monday from 7-8 p.m., which will be a march from St. Anne’s Catholic Church on Colorado Avenue to Douglas Park on Wilshire Boulevard — a procession that will take about 20 minutes.

“This was a grassroots response — the immediate stimulus was a tragic student death at a party, but it’s not just that,” said Kathy McTaggart, an event organizer. “It’s a response to all the loss we have experienced in this school district over the past few years.

“We wanted a way to come together and develop a community understanding of what is behind our problems and develop whole community solutions,” she continued. “The vigil is just the first step.”

Initially the idea for the vigil started at a small meeting of high school parents shortly after Maran’s murder. The group wrote letters to many community organizations to help plan and participate in the vigil.

After the march reaches Douglas Park, there will be a brief ceremony. The city has organized Big Blue Buses to take marchers back to St. Anne’s free of charge.

The vigil has been planned only for the past 10 days; formally it has existed only since last Friday. And planning will likely continue until Monday evening, McTaggart said.

“It started with the high school and with parents, but it spread very rapidly and very deliberately from there to include many,” said McTaggart. “It is a strong response and a beginning to a sustained effort to keep our young people safe.”

The Santa Monica Police Department also will participate in the march, said Lt. Frank Fabrega, the police department’s spokesman.

“We are attending the vigil to support the family and community,” said Fabrega. “Some officers have said they will walk.”

The police department says overall crime is down city-wide. The recent teen deaths have all occurred outside of Santa Monica. And, according to Fabrega, violent crime — including gang activity — is down in the Pico neighborhood, where many residents have recently expressed concern about heightened crime.

“Crime overall is down throughout the city,” he said. “From the police department’s standpoint, crime is not up in the Pico neighborhood.”

As of Friday, the police said it does not plan to close any of the roads where the procession will travel.

For more information about the vigil and how to participate, call McTaggart at (310) 450-8338, ext. 339, or Betty Macias at (310) 458-8688.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 15, 2001.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/121501.pdf?ref=smdp.com)