Youth Gets 22 Years in High Desert Gang Slaying

A 16-year-old gang member was sentenced Tuesday to the maximum term of 22 years and four months in juvenile custody for fatally shooting a popular Antelope Valley High School youth in what authorities described as that area’s first gang-related killing.

Under juvenile sentencing procedures, however, the youth will be released before his 25th birthday, prosecutors said.

The youth pleaded guilty March 23 to second-degree murder in the Jan. 6 slaying of Christopher Sanford, 18, of Lancaster, who was leaving a party in Lancaster when he was shot, authorities said.

The youth also pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the wounding of Sheldon Culver, 20, of Lancaster, who was shot in the neck but later recovered.

Authorities said the youth, a member of a Sylmar gang, shot at several youths who were chasing him from a party that he attempted to crash, but missed and struck Sanford, who died a short time later at a hospital.

“He happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Chesley McKay, who prosecuted the case.

Investigators named the youth as a suspect after interviewing other party-goers who witnessed the shooting, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said. The youth remained at large for several weeks but turned himself in to authorities Feb. 12.

The shooting prompted an outpouring of grief by Sanford’s schoolmates and teachers, who remembered him as a likable youth and a star goalie for the high school’s soccer team.

Although gang activity has been on the rise in the Antelope Valley in past years, sheriff’s investigators said the shooting was the first gang-related fatality in the area.