Friends Say Suspect, 12, Had Crush on Victim

A 12-year-old boy, identified as the youth who fatally shot a female classmate Monday inside the Mall of Orange, had a crush on the girl and brandished a pistol to impress her moments before the shooting, his friends said Tuesday.

Acquaintances and classmates said the youth, a seventh-grader at Cerro Villa Middle School in Villa Park, was smitten with Jacalyn Calabrese, a curly-haired brunette who was mortally wounded in front of dozens of horrified shoppers. Jacalyn, they said, had been the youth’s girlfriend in elementary school and the two had remained inseparable friends at Cerro Villa.

During the month before the shooting, Matthew Palmer, another student, said the youth had been showing a .25-caliber pistol to friends and that he had seen the gun at least five times.

Matthew said that Monday evening, before the youth went to the mall with Jacalyn and several of her friends, the boy displayed the pistol again and told him that it was loaded.

“He showed me there were bullets in it,” said Matthew, 12. “It scared me. It was the first time I had seen bullets in the gun’s chamber.”

The suspect, whose name was not released by police because he is a juvenile, was taken into custody Monday night more than two hours after the shooting. He temporarily sought refuge at a friend’s home until a member of the household learned of the shooting and persuaded the youth to call his parents.

Residents of the house said the boy, who had a reputation for acting tough, was reduced to tears during the hours immediately after Jacalyn’s death.

Orange Police Sgt. Art Romo said Tuesday that officers finally found the gun believed used in the shooting. The .25-caliber, semiautomatic pistol was recovered about 11 p.m. Monday near a house in the neighborhood west of the mall where the boy had fled.

How the youth got the weapon is unclear. Friends of the youth said he stole the gun from his father, but his relatives deny that any family members owned the pistol.

A decision regarding prosecution is not expected until today after police and prosecutors meet, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. John D. Conley, who handles juvenile cases. The boy, whose first name is Juan, is being held without bail in Orange County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of murder.

Conley said that in the four years that he has been with the Orange County district attorney’s office, he could not remember any case “quite like this,” where the alleged assailant was so young.

Although police would not advance any theories about the shooting Tuesday, witnesses said it appeared that Jacalyn’s death was a bad joke gone awry, the senseless act of a reckless youth.

“He was just all mellow and trying to be cool in front of Jackie,” said Keli Edwards, a seventh-grader who was with the two at the mall when the shooting occurred. “Then he looked at me like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t mean to do that.’ ”

Keli said the boy had been playing with the gun all afternoon and at one time pointed it at her head. “I said ‘Jesus Christ,’ and ducked and ran away,” she recalled.

Investigators allege that the boy shot Jacalyn, 12, once in the forehead after he displayed the weapon and she joked with him about whether the gun was real.

“ ‘Come on, Juan, shoot me,’ ” Keli quoted Jacalyn as saying.

Jacalyn then stepped back from the boy, who drew the small pistol from his left pants pocket, steadied it with two hands, and a shot rang out, Keli said.

Witnesses said that as the girl clutched her forehead and fell to the floor, the youth fled, yelling “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

The boy fled to the Cumberland Avenue home of Michael Padilla, a classmate, Little League teammate and close friend. The stucco-and-tile house is about half a mile from the shopping center.

“ ‘Help me, Mike, I think I have killed someone,’ ” Joseph Padilla quoted the suspect as telling his son. Padilla said the youth appeared shaken and cried off and on for about 2 1/2 hours.

When he learned from a neighbor that there had been a shooting at the mall, Padilla said, he became suspicious and asked the sobbing youth to call his mother. He did so, and at about 8:45 p.m., the young suspect’s mother arrived, along with Orange police officers, who took him into custody.

During his stay, Padilla said, the youth told Michael, “ ‘I hope she lives. Maybe I should be suffering the same thing Jacalyn is.’ ”

A few blocks from the Padillas’ home, the Calabrese family was notified by a friend’s telephone call that Jacalyn had been shot by one of her friends. Her sister, Angie, and her mother, Gloria, rushed to the mall.

“I pushed my way through the crowd, and I remember seeing a big pool of blood,” said Angie Calabrese, 15.

Her younger sister’s body lay on a brown tile floor between planters of palms and poinsettias across from a Lane Bryant store. White stars made out of branches hung from the ceiling above her. Onlookers stared from the big glass windows of the nearby Sears store.

“I don’t think that this boy did this deliberately. Kids do foolish things,” said Gloria Calabrese, fighting to hold back tears. “This act . . . it’s senseless and I don’t think there ever will be an answer for anything so senseless.”

Before Jacalyn Calabrese left for the mall, she was in the “best of moods,” her sister recalled. “She had just talked on the phone with (the boy). They decided to go to the mall. He picked her up and away they went. I do feel sorry for him. I don’t know what would have made him do such a thing. They have been friends since fourth grade.”

Family members said that services are planned for Saturday at St. Norbert Catholic Church in Orange.

At Cerro Villa--the school Jacalyn and the boy attended--the American flag flew at half-staff Tuesday. Nine psychologists were assigned to the school to help students deal with any trauma that they may have felt as a result of the shooting, said Roger Duthoy, an assistant superintendent of the Orange Unified School District.

Dozens of the students met with the psychologists throughout the day Tuesday, some merely to discuss their feelings about Jacalyn and the boy.

“For these 12- and 13-year-olds, there was a lot of soul-searching. They wonder how could this possibly happen to a friend,” said David Bastin, a psychologist for the district. “They want a way to blame somebody so the whole incident can be resolved immediately. Some side with Jackie, some side with the boy. But we’re trying to tell them, don’t place blame like this.”

Before school, a group of 14-year-old boys walked toward the 820-student campus and talked about the shooting. They said that their classmates had been known as a couple in elementary school and were still close friends.

“He had a crush on Jackie,” said John Novak, a 13-year-old student.

Tim Crouse, 13, who knew both students, said that going to school Tuesday was harder for him because his mother had been at the mall at the time of the shooting. He said many of the girls at the school were crying openly. Others wondered how they could raise money for a memorial.

“I still can’t believe she’s dead and that somebody we know killed her. It’s hard to believe that it can all happen all at once,” Tim Crouse said.

Inside the mall Tuesday morning, stores opened as usual at 9 a.m. Security gates to individual shops were pulled up. Janitors swept the floor briskly, and sales clerks bustled, trying to bring about some normalcy.

But to many mall workers, it a measure of the holiday season had vanished, despite the blinking Christmas lights and glittering garlands over store entrances.

“It’s like somebody stole Christmas,” said Monica O’Donnell, assistant manager of P.J. Sporting Goods. “It’s all mellow instead of upbeat, sort of melancholy. It’s kind of all hitting us at once.”

The brown-tiled seating area where Jacalyn was killed remained empty throughout the morning. Some shoppers seemed to avoid the spot, quickening their pace as they walked by the wooden benches. Others strolled by, some pointing to where they thought the shooting occurred.

Times staff writers Lily Eng, Dave Reyes, Matt Lait, Chris Woodyard and James Robbins contributed to this story.

THE ACCESS ISSUE--Authorities are concerned with the ease that youngsters are able to acquire guns. A27