IRVINE : Expelled Student to Serve Time as Trusty

A UC Irvine freshman, expelled in January for pressing the barrel of a handgun against the heads of two students during an argument on campus, was sentenced Wednesday to serve 45 days as a jail trusty for the Laguna Beach Police Department.

Municipal Judge Susanne S. Shaw also ordered Joshua N. Hagen, 18, to avoid contact with the two students after he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of exhibiting a firearm and for bringing a gun onto public school grounds. A third student who was also present was not directly threatened with the gun. Hagen faced up to one year in jail for the Jan. 19 incident.

Serving time as a trusty will allow Hagen to avoid jail time. Trusties perform chores such as washing cars.

The university expelled Hagen a day after his arrest. Hagen told the court that the university has agreed to let him reapply for the fall of 1993. In the meantime, he will attend a community college, he said.

Police arrested Hagen after three students said he threatened them with a gun during a verbal dispute in the Prado dormitory. The argument began after the students, residents of another dormitory, remarked how Prado looked like a “pigsty” while walking through on their way to a nearby parking lot.

Hagen said he ran to his room to get the .22-caliber handgun, which he said was unloaded, after the three students began pushing him. Hagen’s alleged antagonists told police that Hagen tossed a plastic trash can down at them from a second-floor stairway and ran to get the gun after they ran after him.

Three days after that incident, university police arrested a second student in an unrelated gun incident. Police arrested Paul C. Vallas, 19, after receiving a tip that he had an assault rifle in his dormitory room. Although Vallas never displayed the weapon in a threatening manner, police said, merely possessing a gun on school grounds is a crime.

Vallas pleaded guilty last week to a misdemeanor count of having a gun on campus and was sentenced to working 240 hours on a Caltrans road crew. Vallas also agreed to forfeit his Colt Sporter semiautomatic rifle, which resembles the Colt AR-15 used by many police SWAT teams but has a smaller ammunition magazine. The university suspended Vallas for the remainder of the school year.