POMONA : 15-Year-Old Sentenced in Slaying of Store Clerk
A 15-year-old Azusa boy who was convicted of murder in the robbery and shooting death of a 40-year-old store clerk was ordered confined in the California Youth Authority until he is 25 years old, the maximum sentence for minors.
“The tragedies they just seem to keep coming,” Pomona Juvenile Court Commissioner Wade D. Olson said at a disposition hearing Thursday for the boy, whose name was not released because he is a minor. “A family man, a father, loses his life for $72.”
The boy and his 16-year-old brother were accused of killing Raj Kumar Sharma, a clerk at an Arrow Highway convenience store in February. Sharma died after he was felled by a robber who fired five shots.
The older boy, who has pleaded not guilty, will be tried as an adult. He faces a preliminary hearing July 12 in Citrus Municipal Court in West Covina. The boys’ mother turned her sons into the police because she said she believed that it was her duty.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
