Gang Member, 14, Convicted of Murder

A 14-year-old gang member was convicted of murder Monday for a May 26 shooting rampage near a South-Central Los Angeles junior high school in which one boy died and a man picking up his daughter at the school was wounded.

Juvenile Court Commissioner Jack Gold also found the boy, who was not identified because of his age, guilty of three counts of attempted murder and one count of shooting into an inhabited dwelling. Eliazar Bivian, 15, died in the attack. He was shot twice in the head outside George Washington Carver Junior High School. The teen-ager faces a maximum 11-year term in the California Youth Authority. He must be released at age 25.

The violence erupted as Jose Luis Mendez, 41, tried to drive away with his 15-year-old daughter, who met him near a sports field at the back of the school. Mendez honked several times in an attempt to get the boy to move out of a roadway, then got out to confront him. The teen-ager drew a .38-caliber pistol and shot the man once in the stomach, then fled through an alley and reloaded before encountering Bivian at Wadsworth Avenue and 45th Street.

After exchanging words, the younger boy fired twice, killing Bivian. He also fired at two 13-year-old boys before being caught by school security officers. The defense tried to prove that the John Muir Junior High School student was in a “paranoid state” at the time of the rampage, prosecutors said.