Youth Guilty in Jewelry Store Murders : Courts: Judge sentences boy, 15, to be imprisoned until age 25, the maximum term for juveniles.

A Pasadena Juvenile Court judge rejected a 15-year-old boy’s claim that he was pressured into crime by three adults and convicted him of first-degree murder Wednesday in the deaths of a Pasadena jewelry store owner and her 11-year-old son.

“The court considers (the minor’s claim) to be a complete fabrication,” Judge Sherrill D. Luke said. “Somehow the gun miraculously went off. The minor said he doesn’t recall pulling the trigger. I find that to be incredible.”

Kim (Ana) Yu, 39, and her son, Johnny, died Feb. 25 after the gun-wielding youth opened fire with a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun during a robbery at City Jewelry on Colorado Boulevard. Authorities said the boy was the gunman for three adult robbers.

Attorney John Nese unsuccessfully argued that the boy committed the robbery only after he was tricked into entering the jewelry store and later threatened at gunpoint until he went inside a second time.

Because of that duress, Nese said, the charges should be reduced to manslaughter.

But the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Silas Davis, said in closing arguments that the youth could have freed himself from such duress by giving up when Yu’s husband, Ling Yu, pointed a gun at the robbers.

The youth “could have gone over to the good guys’ side,” Davis told the judge. “This defendant chose not to.”

Luke ordered the minor, whose name was not released, confined at a California Youth Authority facility until the age of 25, the maximum penalty for first-degree murder in the state juvenile system.

Two others charged with murder in the same robbery--Christopher Lynch, 31, of Hollywood and Bonnie Doreen Knoll, 29, of Corona--face pretrial hearings beginning Monday. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty against them. If convicted and not sentenced to death, they could receive 25 years to life in prison without parole.

A third person implicated in the robbery, known to police only as “Bubba,” has not been apprehended.

The brutality of the deaths and the differences between juvenile and adult penalties for murder have angered two people associated with the case.

Detective Thomas Delgado of the Pasadena Police Department and Kathy McAleese, a Yu family friend, said they will testify on behalf of pending state Assembly Bill 886, which would allow minors as young as 14 to be prosecuted as adults for serious crimes. Current law requires youths to be at least 16 to be prosecuted as adults in such cases.

During the trial, the youth testified that he was unaware that a robbery was about to happen until it was too late for him to escape.

Wearing thick eyeglasses and speaking in a barely audible voice, the youth said a friend introduced him to Lynch and Knoll a week before the Pasadena robbery. When he admired Lynch’s watch, the boy testified, Lynch said he would show him where he got the timepiece.

The youth said he had been promised a job moving furniture on the day of the robbery. But when that fell through, he ended up in Pasadena with Lynch, Knoll and “Bubba,” he testified.

The four drove to City Jewelry, the boy said, where Lynch instructed him to go in and look for watches. When the youth returned to the car, Lynch handed him a gun and told him to join in a robbery of the store, the boy testified.

The youth said the others drew guns when he refused to participate. Reluctantly, the youth said, he went inside the store with Knoll. After Knoll mumbled something, Ling Yu drew a gun, the boy said. The youth said he panicked, dropped to the floor and the gun he was holding went off.

But the youth’s account was contradicted by witnesses in the store. They testified that the young man, on his first visit inside, told clerks he wanted to look at diamond necklaces, not watches. The witnesses said the youth left the store after a few minutes, promising to return with his girlfriend. When he was admitted back inside after the shop had closed, he was the one to first draw a gun, they said.

In addition, a videotape from a store camera shows the youth crouched and pointing the gun. He is not shown on his hands and knees as he described in court.