2 Boys Arraigned in Chatsworth Shooting : Crime: A 14-year-old pleads innocent in wounding of high school student. Prosecutors want to try 17-year-old youth as an adult.

A 14-year-old boy accused of shooting and critically wounding a Chatsworth High School student while trying to steal his backpack pleaded innocent to an attempted murder charge Monday as prosecutors took steps to put his 17-year-old alleged accomplice on trial as an adult.

During separate arraignments, the teen-agers, wearing bright orange Juvenile Hall jumpsuits, smiled and nodded upon seeing relatives, but sat quietly through their brief appearances in San Fernando Valley Juvenile Court.

“How old are you?” Juvenile Court Commissioner Jack Gold asked one of the baby-faced suspects.

“Seventeen? Really?”

The youths are scheduled to return to court Jan. 10, when trial will begin for the 14-year-old and the older boy will attend a hearing to determine whether he will be tried as an adult.

The 14-year-old Sylmar boy is charged with premeditated attempted murder, attempted robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

The 17-year-old, who lives in Lake View Terrace, faces charges of attempted murder, attempted robbery and robbery.

Both youths are members of a loosely knit graffiti “tagging” crew and were on probation for other crimes at the time of the shooting, authorities said.

Police said that in the hours before the Dec. 15 attack on 17-year-old Chatsworth High School senior Gabriel Gettleson, the two accused boys had gone on a spree in which they committed several robberies, including trying to steal a backpack from another Chatsworth High student moments before they shot Gettleson.

Gettleson, who remains in intensive care at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, had refused to give up his backpack as he waited for a ride home from his mother in front of the school.

The backpack contained only books, police said.

On the day before the 17-year-old suspect was arrested at his home last week, his mother died of cancer, authorities said. His father is currently hospitalized with cancer.

According to the police report, the boy has a long history of arrests, including two stints at a camp for juvenile offenders. He completed the second term, for burglary, only 27 days before he was arrested in the Gettleson shooting, the report says.

If convicted as an adult, the 17-year-old could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The 14-year-old suspected triggerman faces a maximum sentence of about nine years in the California Youth Authority.

In addition to shooting Gettleson and attempting to rob the other Chatsworth High student, prosecutors claim the 14-year-old robbed a couple at gunpoint at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley.

A third juvenile--a 17-year-old Burbank youth--has been charged as an accomplice in the Gettleson shooting for allegedly driving the 14-year-old away from the crime scene.