Boy, 11, Who Fired Fatal Shot Is Sentenced

An 11-year-old boy who tried to shoot out a porch light and pierced the wall of a trailer instead, killing the mother of three young children, was sentenced Tuesday to live in a residential facility until he is deemed ready to return home.

The 4-foot-5, 75-pound boy, who was 10 at the time of the shooting last month, listened to a Spanish translation of the juvenile court proceedings on headphones too big for him. His head barely topped the back of his chair at the defense table, and he seemed oblivious to the gravity of the situation.

The fourth-grader been held in the county’s Juvenile Hall since the March 8 shooting occurred in a crime-ridden section of Barrio Logan, where he had been taking turns firing a .22-caliber sawed-off rifle with two other boys, ages 13 and 14, from a neighbor’s rooftop.

An errant bullet killed 25-year-old Manuela Garcia de la Rosa as she put her 8-year-old son to bed. Garcia also was the mother of a 3-year-old boy, who is deaf and mute, and a 6-year-old girl. Her husband, Fidel Mariscal, was in the courtroom Monday.

Police were able to find the boys by using a laser beam to trace the trajectory of the bullet from the hole in the trailer wall to the roof of a neighbor’s home. Eventually, they tracked down the youths by questioning neighbors.

Juvenile Court Judge Melinda L. Lasater and Raymond Avila, a deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, praised the victim’s family Tuesday for insisting that the boy undergo therapy and get an education.

“I am amazed that, despite the family’s tragic loss, they talked not about revenge, but about making this boy a productive member of society,” Avila said outside court. “A lot of people who lost a family member would be looking for severe punishment.”

The boy, whose name was not made public because of his age, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter with the use of a firearm, which exposes him to a maximum of nine years of punishment if his stay in the residential facility is not successful.

A committee of San Diego County’s juvenile probation department will decide within the next 15 days where the 11-year-old is sent. He could be placed in a private or state-run facility, commonly called a “24-hour school,” or sent out of state. In either case, he will receive education and psychological counseling.

Judge Lasater ordered a review of the boy’s progress in six months and again in a year. The boy’s court-appointed attorney, Eric Orloff, said he expects the 11-year-old to spend at least a year in the school.

“I categorize this as ‘kids should not play with guns,’ ” Orloff said. “There was no evil motive on the part of this kid. If he throws a rock, nobody gets hurt. But he picks up a .22-caliber gun and someone got killed. The chances of that happening with these circumstances is astronomical, but it did happen.”

Garcia’s husband, Fidel Mariscal, sat in the front row of the courtroom with his uncle and a member of a victim’s rights program. On the other side of the aisle, the boy’s mother, wearing headphones for translation, watched her son during sentencing. She showed no emotion.

Neighbors said the boy was constantly in trouble, and Mariscal speculated that the youngster may have retaliated against the family because Mariscal refused to let him borrow his motor scooter a month before the shooting.

Avila and Orloff said they were not permitted to comment about the boy’s background because he is a juvenile but allowed that the youth had troubles.

“Let’s just say things were not all right at home,” Orloff said.

Lasater had several options in sentencing the child. The boy could have been sent home and kept on probation for any length of time. He could have been placed in Juvenile Hall or a youth camp for 30 days, sentences that most authorities involved in the case agreed were too light for the crime.

Or he could have been sent to a California Youth Authority institution, which his attorney said is usually reserved for more hardened offenders, like gang members.

“No reasonable person would disagree with the judge’s sentence,” Orloff said. “Nobody was out to punish him, only to modify his behavior.”

Avila told the judge that, because the boy admitted guilt, he was on the “first step toward rehabilitation. We want long-term placement in a 24-hour school with therapeutic leanings.”

The boy answered “yeah” and “yes” when Lasater asked if he understood he was being placed in a residential facility and that he was to follow all conditions of his probation.

“This will give him structure in his life,” Lasater said. “Because of his age and the circumstances in the case, this is the best option.”

Looking down at the young boy, she wished him good luck.

He then stood up as a bailiff, towering over him, led him out of the courtroom. The boy wrapped his arms around his upper body, walked out with an exaggerated swagger in his step and took one last glance back into courtroom before being escorted out.

Avila conceded after the sentencing that “the system is not designed to deal with a 10-year-old on a regular basis” but that, considering the circumstances, “this is the best resolution.”