National City

Ralph Moritz, 26, was bound over for trial Tuesday on a murder charge in the July 17 shooting death of a 10-year-old boy in National City.

San Diego Municipal Court Judge Wayne Peterson ordered Moritz to remain in jail in lieu of $100,000 bail and set an arraignment in Superior Court for Aug. 27.

Moritz, a technician at the Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center, is accused of shooting Clark Key with a rifle purchased the same day. The boy was shot while playing outside his parents’ apartment in the complex where Moritz lives.

“What we have here is a situation that my client believed that . . . it was unloaded,” said Richard Siref, attorney for Moritz. “There’s no evidence my client acted with malignant harm, a wanton disregard. It was not a confrontational situation. He was looking out the window. He was talking to Mr. Smith and the gun went off.”

Siref said a friend who was with Moritz at the time of the incident, named only as Mr. Smith, didn’t tell Moritz the gun was loaded when he picked it up. Siref said Moritz knew it wasn’t loaded earlier because he bought it the day of the shooting.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Anear argued that “the defendant pointed a gun at a live target deliberately and pulled the trigger.”

“It’s a willful act without regard for risk. You don’t point a gun at anyone whether it’s loaded or not . . . He made absolutely no effort to determine if the gun was loaded. It was deliberately aimed at him. We think it’s second-degree murder,” Anear said.

Peterson denied Siref’s motion seeking to lower Moritz’s bail and reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. The judge said a jury must decide the charge, but noted that “it may be a manslaughter case.”