Teen-Ager Not Guilty of Murder : Courts: Judge convicts 17-year-old of lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter in accidental shooting of his girlfriend, 16.

A Thousand Oaks teen-ager who fatally shot his girlfriend while playing with a loaded gun is guilty of involuntary manslaughter rather than murder because he did not expect the weapon to fire when he pulled the trigger, a judge ruled Thursday.

Although he called the behavior of the 17-year-old defendant “unthinking and callous,” Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. said the youth’s actions did not meet the legal definition of murder, which requires that a person know that the conduct is dangerous to human life.

“I don’t believe that he had any concept, at the time that he did it, that there was any reasonable possibility the gun would go off,” Campbell said after the five-day Juvenile Court trial.

The judge based his decision on the fact that the defendant had been pointing the 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun at teen-agers all afternoon July 13, but it never fired until he pointed it at 16-year-old Jacqueline Reay and pulled the trigger.

She died after being shot once in the eye while standing in the kitchen of her Las Casitas condominium.

The defendant showed no emotion as Campbell announced the acquittal to the second-degree murder charge. But his mother and grandmother, seated directly behind him in the courtroom, burst into tears.

Across the courtroom from the youth’s family was Ingrid Reay, mother of the dead girl. Although she also showed no emotion as the verdict was announced, she expressed her anger outside the courtroom.

“I might not be happy with the judgment, but there’s a higher judgment than any court in the world, and he will be judged by that,” Reay said. “He will have to live for the rest of his life knowing that he killed my daughter.”

Defense attorney Victor Furio said he will seek counseling and treatment for his client at the sentencing hearing Nov. 18. Although Campbell could order the teen-ager confined to the California Youth Authority until he is 25, Furio said he will ask for the youth’s immediate release.

The attorney said the burly defendant squeezed his hand when Campbell announced the verdict.

“He left this courtroom today feeling that someone believed him, and he wasn’t a murderer,” Furio said.

Prosecutors conceded that the killing was accidental; that was the reason the defendant was tried as a juvenile rather than as an adult. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn argued that the crime was second-degree murder. And he said the defendant was a bully and a showoff who did not care whether the handgun was loaded.

Glynn declined to comment after the verdict, except to say he will seek the maximum sentence for the teen-ager.

Witnesses to the shooting testified that the defendant pointed the loaded gun at Jacqueline Reay repeatedly the day she died, and he ignored her pleas to stop.

One witness testified that the defendant told the girl: “If I shot you in the leg right now, it would hurt so bad that you would want me to kill you.”

The defendant also testified, at one point breaking down in tears as he described the fatal shooting.

Although he admitted pointing the gun at Jacqueline and several other teen-agers, the defendant said that it was a joke and that he never intended to harm or even scare anyone.

Campbell ruled that the teen-ager knew “in the abstract” that it was dangerous to point a loaded weapon at someone and pull the trigger, but he did not apply that concept to his own behavior.

The defendant suggested during testimony that the shooting occurred because he let a friend play with his gun, and the other youth may have moved a bullet from a clip into the firing chamber.

Part of the defense was that the defendant suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, an affliction marked by poor judgment and inattention. Furio, in asking that the youth be convicted of involuntary manslaughter, argued that the disorder left the teen-ager with no common sense.

Besides convicting the defendant on the manslaughter charge, Campbell also found him guilty of three battery charges involving other incidents over the past year.

The defendant had previously pleaded guilty to two other assaults and one count of brandishing a firearm.