Long Beach mother sentenced in teen’s murder

A Long Beach mother convicted of second-degree murder for driving her teenage son and his friends to and from the scene of a fatal stabbing was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years to life in prison.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Arthur Jean sentenced Eva Daley for the killing of a 13-year-old boy last year in what jurors concluded was a gang-related attack.

During her trial last month, Daley portrayed herself as a struggling single mother of three who had little idea that her oldest son was in a gang. She testified that she was driving her son’s friends home on the evening of June 25, 2007, when they suddenly jumped out of her white Chevrolet Tahoe and carried out the assault.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lonergan rejected her story, telling jurors that the attack on Jose Cano was planned in revenge for an incident hours earlier in which a group of youngsters from the victim’s gang threw roadside flares at Daley’s apartment.

Some of her son’s friends who admitted attacking Jose testified during the trial that Daley picked them up and drove them to the area near 14th Street Park, where the assault took place. A bystander who was walking his dog that evening told the court that he heard a woman in the car shout to the boys as they raced back from the attack, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Come on! Come on!”

Lonergan told jurors that blood from the victim and the assailant, Heriberto Garcia, was found inside Daley’s SUV.

Six other boys, including Daley’s son, now 17, pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges. Under their sentences, they can be incarcerated as juveniles up to the age of 25. Garcia, 17, was tried as an adult with Daley and also convicted of second-degree murder.

Garcia, who was 15 when the attack took place, was accused of inflicting the fatal stab wounds. He was sentenced last week to 15 years to life in prison.

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jack.leonard@latimes.com