Boy Sentenced to Year in Juvenile Hall for Slaying

A 12-year-old boy who shot and killed a classmate while clowning with a handgun in a mall bustling with Christmas shoppers was sentenced Monday to a year in Juvenile Hall.

Juan Manuel Cardenas Jr. of Orange, who had pleaded guilty to one count of involuntary manslaughter with a firearm, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge C. Robert Jameson. Cardenas could have received up to six years in state prison.

Before the sentencing, the mother of shooting victim Jacalyn Calabrese, who also was 12, delivered an emotional statement.

“Juan, I would like to know why you shot my daughter,” Gloria Calabrese said. “I would like to know what you think you deserve for punishment. My daughter didn’t deserve this.”

Before Monday’s hearing, Calabrese had written the judge, asking that Cardenas be imprisoned for life.

In another letter to the judge, the boy’s father had begged for mercy and accepted responsibility for the shooting.

“I am the one who should be incarcerated and not my son,” wrote Juan Cardenas Sr. “Because if I had not permitted this firearm to be brought to my house, none of this would have happened.”

The younger Cardenas was showing off his uncle’s .25-caliber pistol to Jacalyn Calabrese and her girlfriend as they strolled through the Mall of Orange on Dec. 18. When Calabrese taunted him by saying the gun wasn’t real, Cardenas removed a cartridge from the chamber, aimed the weapon at her forehead and pulled the trigger. He apparently had not realized that a new round had automatically sprung into firing position.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John D. Conley said the punishment was the stiffest possible without sending the boy to the California Youth Authority, the state prison for under-age offenders.

Juvenile Hall is a county facility primarily for those who commit less serious crimes. Cardenas was also ordered to maintain contact with a probation officer until he turns 21, Conley said.