Families Disagree on Verdict in Teen’s Death : Courts: Mother of boy killed in fight says penalty for schoolmate was not harsh enough. The youth was sentenced to a camp.

Family members of 17-year-old Sergio Godinez, an Azusa High School football player sentenced last week to a youth camp for the death of a schoolmate, said this week that the penalty was just.

“It was an accident,” Cindy Godinez, 25, Sergio’s sister-in-law and legal guardian, said of the crime. “The whole family is really sorry. It was just a dumb fight. . . . If he knew a death was going to occur, he would have never gotten involved.”

But Ruth Worrell, the mother of the slain boy, 16-year-old Eric Crabtree, feels the court system let her down.

“You shouldn’t kill somebody and pretty much get away with it,” Worrell said during a telephone interview after the sentencing. “(The sentence) is going to encourage other children to kill other children. . . . I’ve got nothing (no feeling) for him and his family. I’m the one with the child in the graveyard.”

Crabtree, a high school sophomore who, with his mother, moved to Azusa from West Virginia last summer, died Jan. 18 from brain injuries suffered in an on-campus fight with Godinez.

The dispute began during the lunch hour with name-calling. It continued into the school’s sixth period on a sidewalk outside a classroom.

During the ensuing fight, Godinez body-slammed Crabtree to the sidewalk, police said. But Godinez’s defense attorney and school officials said Crabtree fell during the fight.

Godinez entered a no-contest plea last month to a charge of involuntary manslaughter. He could have been sentenced to up to four years in a state-run, California Youth Authority facility, but Juvenile Court Commissioner Wade Olsen took into account Godinez’s lack of a criminal record and sent him instead to a Los Angeles County-run youth camp for a maximum of one year.

With time already served in Juvenile Hall, Godinez could be released as early as July, Cindy Godinez said. A U.S.-born citizen whose parents live in Tijuana, Sergio Godinez, who played tight end on the varsity football team, plans to complete his high school education during summer school and enlist in the Marine Corps, she said.

“He’s going to try to prove to everyone that he is a good person,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dale Crabtree, Eric’s father, who lives in West Virginia, has filed a $2.5-million wrongful death claim against the Azusa Unified School District, the district’s superintendent, the school board and the Azusa High School principal.

Attorney Monday Abengowe said the district failed to properly supervise the campus, did not have trained security guards on campus to deal with confrontations and did not enforce a school policy that prohibits loitering during the sixth period, the last session of the school day, during which the fight occurred.

The claim, filed April 20, will be submitted to the school board on Tuesday, when it will be rejected. After that, lawyers for the district’s insurance carrier will handle the matter, said John Kloster, the district’s associate superintendent of business.