2 Pacoima Boys Plead Not Guilty in Sniping Death of Truck Driver

Two 14-year-old Pacoima boys have been charged with murder in a random sniping attack on a La Crescenta man last week, and both pleaded not guilty Tuesday in San Fernando Valley Juvenile Court.

The youths, who showed no emotion during the proceedings, entered their pleas as their families and two clergymen stood solemnly in the back of the courtroom.

Although only one of the boys fired the rifle shot that killed delivery-truck driver Mark Rodney Sanford as he was unhitching a trailer, both are charged with murder in the Thursday shooting.

One of the boys also was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and with firing at a moving vehicle for an attack on an RTD bus the day before Sanford, 26, was killed. A 13-year-old Pacoima girl was slightly wounded in that attack.

Held in Juvenile Hall

The youths were arrested Friday and are being held in Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

California law requires that the boys, because they are under 16, be tried as juveniles rather than as adults despite the severity of the crime of which they are accused. If convicted, the boys would be sent to California Youth Authority but would be released by their 25th birthdays.

They were ordered by Commissioner Michael G. Price to remain in custody, despite defense attorneys’ requests to turn the boys over to their families.

Albert Meister, who represents one of the boys, said his client is “very remorseful . . . for his unintentional act.”

Marlene Gerson, who represents the other boy, also requested her client’s release, citing his lack of a criminal record as well as the character references of two ministers from his family’s church.

But Deputy Dist. Atty Jan Maurizi called the sniper attacks “violent, senseless, ultimate acts.”

Sanford was killed on his job at the Familian Pipe & Supply Co. plant in the 12600 block of Van Nuys Boulevard. According to police reports, he was in the parking lot next to the building, bending over to detach a truck from a flatbed trailer when he was struck by a bullet that entered his lower back and emerged from his upper chest. He died at the scene.

Police believe one of the two boys fired the fatal bullet from a second-story window of the apartment in which one of them lives. Both are charged because both were present and one “aided and abetted” the boy who did the actual shooting, the district attorney’s office alleges. Maurizi and the police would not specify which of the two pulled the trigger, but they believe they know.

Considered to Be Impulsive Act

At the time of the youths’ arrest, a police lieutenant said the killing appeared to be a “spur-of-the-moment decision to see if they could shoot him.”

The attack on the bus Wednesday injured a student at Walter Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood who was hit in the cheek either by a bullet or by glass from a window it shattered. She was riding a Southern California Rapid Transit District bus north on Van Nuys Boulevard toward her home in Pacoima, police said.

Acting on information provided by neighbors of the Familian plant, police obtained a warrant to search the apartment. They found three guns and arrested the two boys.

The mother of one of the boys told The Times that she kept firearms and ammunition in her apartment for protection.