16-Year-Old’s Killer Was at Close Range, Police Now Say

A 16-year-old San Clemente girl who was killed as she waited in a car for her boyfriend was apparently shot at close range and wasn’t hit accidentally by a wayward bullet, authorities said Wednesday.

But the motive behind the slaying of Angela Lynn Wagner still eluded sheriff’s investigators, who continued to search for the person who shot the popular high school student Monday evening in the parking lot of a Dana Point apartment complex.

“The detectives are still following up on hundreds of pieces of information,” Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Martini said. “The whole scenario is very sad. A 16-year-old life taken away at Christmas time.”

Stunned residents of Capistrano Beach, the section of Dana Point where the shooting occurred, called Wednesday for a community meeting next month to talk about crime, youth and gang violence.

“It’s just really frightening because it’s right in our own neighborhood,” said Diane Harkey, vice president of the Capistrano Beach Community Assn. and a community resident for 14 years. “It’s just been a progressive decaying and it seems like it’s been speeding up lately.”

Dana Point City Councilwoman Karen Lloreda, also of Capistrano Beach, said the killing has left residents in a “state of disbelief.” Her daughter attends San Clemente High School, where Wagner was a sophomore and the second student to die in a violent crime in two months.

“My daughter could have been sitting in a car waiting for a friend,” Lloreda said. “It could have been anyone.”

Lloreda said the planned forum will offer an opportunity for residents and police to work together on curbing violence.

“For a starting point, we have to simply take the position that it’s absolutely unacceptable to live like this,” Lloreda said. “We have to do whatever it takes to change.”

The shooting, about 6:45 p.m. Monday, happened while Wagner sat in her boyfriend’s 1980 Honda Civic in front of an apartment complex on the 25000 block of Domingo Road, authorities said.

The boyfriend, a 17-year-old from Mission Viejo, had gone to an apartment in the complex to pick up an item from a family friend and was away from the car for just a short while, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Residents of the apartment complex said the boyfriend, whom they identified as Chris Antonio, once lived at the complex with his family.

When the boyfriend returned to his car, a dying Wagner told him she was having trouble breathing and quickly lost consciousness. Wagner, who was hit once in the chest through the open window of the car, was pronounced dead at Samaritan Medical Center in San Clemente.

Authorities have said the shooting could have been random, noting that the girl and her boyfriend had no connections to gangs and went to the apartment on what Martini called “legitimate business.”

On Wednesday, Martini disclosed that investigators don’t believe Wagner was hit accidentally by a stray bullet, and that she had been shot at “what appeared to be a closer range.”

“This is a real difficult case,” Martini said. “The detectives have a lot of information and a lot of pieces to try and fit into the puzzle.”

Although the neighborhood where the apartment complex is located has had problems in the past with drugs, transients and some gang activity, things have been improving, said Martini, former chief of police services for the Sheriff’s Department in Dana Point and San Juan Capistrano.