ORANGE : Boy Sentenced After Plea by Victim’s Kin

Donna Chounlamany never thought tragedy could strike twice in her family.

But on Friday she sat before a Juvenile Court judge and urged him to hand out the harshest sentence possible to 15-year-old Gregory Callison, convicted of stabbing her brother to death on March 8 when a fight on a Garden Grove street over a Volkswagen bug escalated out of control. About a year before, another brother, B.C., was killed in a traffic accident.

“I never thought we would have to go through the second loss of a family member,” Chounlamany, 19, told Judge Ronald E. Owen during the sentencing of Callison for the killing of 18-year-old Moukda Chounlamany, a football star at Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove.

Callison, whose own family shed tears during the hearing, sat without visible emotion as he was sentenced to the California Youth Authority for an indeterminate sentence that cannot last past his 25th birthday.

Owen, who convicted him in July of second-degree murder, rejected his claims that he acted in self-defense.

“The bottom line is Moukda didn’t deserve to die,” said Donna Chounlamany. “My dad is so angry and depressed that he couldn’t express his feelings. . . . He asked me to speak for him because he said when he talks about what had happened to Moukda, the anger was caught in his throat and he couldn’t talk about it.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko said he hoped the sentence might help Callison, who was 14 at the time of the stabbing, change his life, control his temper and take responsibility for the act that claimed the life of someone who “did nothing wrong and had everything to live for.”

“It’s always sad,” he said. “We’re talking about a 14-year-old who should be out bicycling and playing in the park with other kids. . . . His life is just beginning.”

Molko said Callison had a history of aggression, including an incident in which he stabbed a classmate with a pencil.

“A 14-year-old boy couldn’t be more aggressive than this boy,” he told the judge.

Defense attorney Julian Bailey, however, urged the judge to reconsider the second-degree murder conviction, saying the youth believed he was acting in self-defense, even if that belief might seem unreasonable to some.

While Owen said he believed Callison probably did not intend to kill, he described the youth’s actions as showing “wanton disregard” for that possibility.

“You just didn’t care, I think, at the time,” the judge told Callison.

According to police and prosecutors, Callison mistakenly believed that two teen-agers, including the victim’s younger brother, Tootoo, were trying to steal his uncle’s dune buggy parked in the 12700 block of Louise Street in Garden Grove, and ran out to confront them, punching one in the face and running them off.

Moukda and Tootoo Chounlamany and a friend were again in the neighborhood about 9 p.m., and Callison approached their vehicle and punched the older Chounlamany in the face as he sat behind the steering wheel, authorities said. Callison stabbed Moukda Chounlamany in the chest when he stepped out of the car, they said.

Callison fled but returned several hours later and turned himself over to police.