LAGUNA NIGUEL : Suspect Arraigned in Shooting of Child, 4

A Christmas Eve drive-by shooting that left a young San Clemente girl hospitalized was part of a nightlong crime spree by gang members seeking revenge against a rival South County gang, prosecutors charged Tuesday.

“It was retaliatory,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin G. Engquist, a member of the district attorney’s gang unit, which aided in the Jan. 4 arrest of Floyd Avery, 18, of Oceanside.

“This was just another occurrence in a feud that’s been going on for a significant period of time,” he said after an arraignment at South County Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel, during which Avery pleaded innocent to attempted murder and other charges.

Local law enforcement officials had repeatedly downplayed gang involvement in the attack that injured Prisca Lorena Caudilla, 4.

But in court Tuesday, Engquist described the thin, bespectacled teen-ager as a dangerous member of a South County gang and said gang members had conspired to kill.

Engquist said the rare South County drive-by shooting was the result of bad blood between the San Clemente Varrio Chico gang and their longstanding rivals, the San Juan (or SJC) Boys gang.

Although not the first drive-by shooting in San Clemente, the incident marked the first time that someone was injured, police said.

Avery, who was one of three suspects arrested in the case, is being held in Orange County Jail on $250,000 bail on charges of attempted murder, shooting from a car, shooting into a car, shooting at a house, assault with a firearm and filing a false report to police.

If convicted, he could serve up to 18 years in prison.

The other two suspects, both 17-year-old San Juan Capistrano residents, are being held in Juvenile Hall on similar charges.

“This case involved a gang shooting,” Engquist told Municipal Judge Arthur G. Koelle, who denied a motion by Avery’s attorney to allow his client to be released on his own recognizance while he awaits a Feb. 20 pretrial hearing.

Engquist said prosecutors will prove that the attack was part of a premeditated plan to seek revenge for an unspecified grievance.

The prosecutor said the shooting unfolded this way: On the night of the attack, Avery and others met at his 15-year-old girlfriend’s house. From there, several of them went to San Clemente, some in Avery’s 1973 Datsun and others in another car. At the first stop in the city, someone in Avery’s car tried to fire a shotgun at a rival gang member, who was standing in an alley. The gun failed to discharge and the car sped away.

Later, the child was hit by pellets from a shotgun while she played on the porch of her neighbor’s second-floor apartment in the 100 block of Avenida Pelaya.

Engquist said the group then went to another location, where they shot at someone else but missed.