‘A Normal Kid’ Who Became ‘An Animal’ Gets a Life Sentence

Aleshia Harrell wasn’t a bad kid, her mother insists. But somewhere along the line, she became one.

She committed her first grand theft when she was 12, court records show. By the time she was 17, she had been convicted of burglary, assault and additional counts of grand theft. Then, less than four months after she was paroled from the California Youth Authority, the 19-year-old Harrell got a violent start on adulthood, gunning down two men during Gardena robberies one day last year.

On Tuesday, Torrance Superior Court Judge John P. Shook ordered Harrell to spend the rest of her life in state prison. Harrell pleaded guilty to the two murders last month so prosecutors would stop trying to have her put to death.

“The maximum sentence, by that I mean the death penalty, would be justified in this case,” Shook said. “But I am satisfied with the plea agreement.”

Harrell’s mother, Carolyn, was at a loss to explain why her daughter would kill two people.

“She was a normal kid, a very happy kid,” she said outside court. “I love my daughter . . . and I want the families (of the victims) to understand that they grieve for their relatives the same as I grieve for my daughter. She got involved with the wrong crowd, the wrong people, I guess.”

Aleshia Harrell, described by one parole officer as the coldest woman he had ever met, showed no emotion as Shook pronounced sentence. She ducked her head anxiously toward her attorney once as a close friend of one victim tearfully called her “an animal.”

In a written statement to the court, Harrell offered apologies but no reasons for the murders.

“I do feel remorse,” she said in the statement. “I knew it was wrong, but I did it and now I have to take the consequences. I am sorry. I can accept how much time I got. I feel I deserve it for what I did.”

Harrell had admitted that she was the woman who forced her way into Terry Kageyama’s car on Oct. 19, 1991, as Kageyama and his wife and 3-year-old daughter prepared to leave a small Gardena market.

After Kageyama refused her request for a ride, Harrell climbed inside the car anyway and held a gun on his family, ordering Hwasook Kageyama to hand over her jewelry as her husband drove down the street, a court summary said.

At one point, Kageyama slowed the car. Harrell shot him as his wife and daughter leaped from the moving vehicle. Witnesses saw Harrell push Kageyama from the car, a bullet through his heart, at a park three miles away, the summary said.

Less than three hours later, Harrell admitted, she gunned down Orvel Jernigan, 31, of Mar Vista during a robbery.

Very little is known about Jernigan’s death, Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Sitkoff said. Some of Jernigan’s credit cards were found in Harrell’s room when she was arrested, Sitkoff said, and ballistics tests on a gun found in her room prove that it was the weapon used to kill Jernigan.

In addition, blood stains found on a pair of pants in the room match Kageyama’s and Jernigan’s blood types, the court summary said.

But having the case concluded, and Harrell locked away for life, has not ended the pain for the men’s families.

Before the sentencing, friends and relatives tried to articulate their grief to Shook.

“This is my son,” said Irene Jernigan Reinhart, choking back tears and holding up a small photo of Jernigan. “He was the type of person who everybody liked . . . and (he) was murdered for no reason at all.”

Roy Date, a lifelong friend of Kageyama, also fought back tears as he spoke to Shook.

“I would not feel sorry for this lady who chose to live the life of an animal in society,” Date said. “I want this to follow her the rest of her living life. . . . Let her feel the pain that she has caused innocent people who have not done anything to her, her family or to society.”