3 Youths Arrested in 14-Year-Old’s Slaying : Violence: Officials believe he was killed over $2,500 piece of stereo equipment. Tustin suspects are expected to be arraigned today on murder charges.

Authorities announced Tuesday that they have arrested three Tustin teen-agers on suspicion of murdering 14-year-old Carl Dan Claes over a $2,500 “disc jockey console” that Claes’ grandfather recently bought him.

“This is not a case of gang violence or narcotics dealings gone wrong. This is a case of children killing other children for no other reason than stereo equipment,” said Lt. Dan Martini of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Claes’ body was found May 17 in a ditch about three miles from his home, in an affluent unincorporated neighborhood where residents were horrified by the rare intrusion of teen-age violence. He had been shot in the head at close range after leaving the Tustin home where he lived with his grandfather.

Deputies said they executed a search warrant at a Tustin home Monday night and confiscated a .22-caliber handgun believed to be the murder weapon. At the same time, they arrested a 17-year-old suspect at that house who lives elsewhere in Tustin, Martini said.

Two younger boys, ages 15 and 16, turned themselves in early Tuesday, Martini said. All three have been booked into Orange County Juvenile Hall and are expected to be arraigned today on murder charges, he said. The Sheriff’s Department will urge the district attorney’s office to try them as adults, he said.

Investigators also said they confiscated the $2,500 piece of stereo equipment at a location they declined to reveal. Claes had lent the six-foot-long mobile sound system--used at dance parties to play and record rap music--to the three suspects about a week before he was killed, authorities said.

The last time Danella George saw her son, on May 2, the boy had set up the stereo, complete with flashing lights, and the two had danced together, George said. She works for the U.S. Forest Service and lives in the Northern California town of Sonora, and her son had planned to move there to live with her at the end of the school year.

But George said she was unaware that her son lent the equipment or of whether he was involved in a dispute.

“I know he talked about rough kids in the community,” she said. “There were fears he expressed to me and he was glad to be getting out of Tustin. . . . He felt that there were people doing wrong things.”

Dan George, 73, the boy’s grandfather and legal guardian, said he was satisfied that sheriff’s investigators had made arrests in the slaying, but was troubled by the suspects’ ages.

“Yes, it’s good news to hear that someone has been arrested,” George said, “but they’re juveniles. What’s going on out there?”

Authorities refused to identify the three suspects or to say which one may have pulled the trigger. Tustin Unified school board member Gail Michelson said the three had long histories of disciplinary problems in the district and each had been expelled in the past 12 to 18 months.

She would not comment specifically on the former students or say why they had been expelled, saying only that the district had taken its most severe action against them.

At least two of the three may be students at the Tustin branch of Horizon Education Center, a county educational program, according to a teacher who works there.

Investigators described Claes as an average and somewhat mischievous youth who may have fallen in with the wrong crowd in his quest for acceptance after recently changing schools. Claes did not go to school with the suspects, but was associated with them through his music hobby, they said.

“He had friends who were in a break-dancing club,” said Christine Murray, a sheriff’s homicide investigator who appeared at a news conference after working virtually around the clock since the youth’s body was found. “He was not a member. Maybe he had hoped to be.”

Investigators stressed that they are still working on the case. The sheriff’s entire 12-person homicide unit has dedicated itself to the case, and Sheriff’s Department search-and-rescue crews also contributed, combing the grassy slopes on their hands and knees in search of clues where the youth was killed.

The victim, who had recently transferred from Columbus Tustin Middle School to A.G. Currie Middle School, suffered from attention deficit disorder, for which his doctor had prescribed the drug Ritalin. He also was emotionally distraught over the death of his grandmother in March.

Tuesday, Martini and investigators wore green lapel ribbons adorned with teddy bears designed by the boy’s mother in remembrance of her son.

“We’ve got a big empty puzzle board that we’ve been putting pieces to,” Martini said. “We got a few pieces last night.”

Times staff writer Diane Seo contributed to this report.