Teen-Age Killer of Student Faces October Sentencing : Court: Miguel Camarena will undergo evaluation. He faces life in prison without parole in grudge killing near Century High.

A teen-ager convicted of shooting another youth to death near Century High School--a killing that came to symbolize senseless gang violence on city streets--will be sentenced in October after he undergoes an evaluation at the California Youth Authority, a judge ruled Friday.

Miguel Camarena, 19, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for the Feb. 26, 1993, murder of Jose Luis Lopez, a 17-year-old varsity soccer player who was shot in the head as he drove to school in Santa Ana.

During a brief hearing, Superior Court Judge James A. Jackman ordered Camarena to undergo a sentencing evaluation at the CYA. He will be back in court for sentencing Oct. 14.

Such an evaluation is required by law because Camarena was a juvenile when the murder took place. He was ordered to stand trial as an adult.

Deputy Public Defender James Appel has said he hopes his client will be spared state prison and be sentenced instead to the CYA, where juvenile defendants can be held until they reach age 25.

A Superior Court jury took only two hours in April to convict Camarena of first-degree murder, of lying in wait for his victim, and of committing a gang-related crime. Jurors rejected defense arguments that Camarena is mentally retarded and never intended to kill Lopez.

Two days before the shooting, Camarena had lost a fistfight with the victim’s brother, Adrian Lopez, according to court testimony.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marc Rozenberg said the victim watched the fight but did not participate. Even though Camarena’s gripe was with Adrian Lopez, he shot Jose Lopez as “pay back,” a key tenet of street justice that pushes gang members to take action against perceived wrongs, the prosecutor charged.