O.C. Boy, 14, Killed as Teens Play With Gun : Shooting: The victim’s cousin, 13, pulls the trigger of the semiautomatic pistol on a dare, authorities say.

A 14-year-old boy was shot and killed by his 13-year-old cousin Monday while they and two other teen-agers played with a gun in an abandoned apartment duplex, police said.

Police discovered the body of James Valentine just before 11 a.m. inside a boarded-up apartment in the 11000 block of Westminster Avenue. He had been shot in the head.

Investigators said Valentine was shot when he and the other teen-agers were playing with a 9-millimeter handgun. The semiautomatic weapon apparently was brought to the empty building by the 13-year-old cousin whose identity was not released because of his age, police said.

“He was trying to make my brother scared,” said Winter Valentine, the dead boy’s 16-year-old sister. “I don’t think he meant to pull the trigger.”

Garden Grove Police Capt. David Abrecht said the shooting was not intentional.

“But it wasn’t accidental,” Abrecht said. “I’d call it negligent activity that led up to this.”

Investigators said the teens had been frequenting the empty building, entertaining themselves with music from a stereo system they had brought along. On Monday, Valentine’s cousin, who is from Santa Ana, arrived with the handgun to show off to his friends, police said.

The teens told police they didn’t believe the weapon was loaded and challenged the 13-year-old to prove to them that it was.

The cousin pulled the trigger and a bullet pierced Valentine’s head, killing him immediately, authorities said. Police will seek murder charges against the 13-year-old, Sgt. Mike Handfield said.

The three teens then fled toward an adjacent apartment complex. The cousin apparently suffered a gunshot wound to his leg as he was fleeing the scene. Police said the gun might have discharged while he was running with the weapon.

At 10:35 a.m., police received a call from a panicked teen-ager who was asking for medical aid for a victim who was “accidentally shot,” Abrecht said.

Police arrived at the abandoned apartment and discovered Valentine’s body on the floor.

Valentine’s friends and family arrived at the building a short time later. Winter Valentine was at a friend’s home a few blocks away when she heard an ambulance and followed the siren because she had what she called a “feeling.”

She first spied that her cousin had been wounded and began frantically searching for her brother. Her mother arrived minutes later and a police officer broke the news about 14-year-old James. “That’s when we all broke down and cried,” the sister said.

Neighbors and officials at Valentine’s school described him as a conscientious student who kept out of trouble.

“I never had discipline problems with him,” said Robert Golde, vice principal at James Irvine Intermediate School. “He was a good student, had good behavior, a good attitude. James was not a student I had to worry about.”

Valentine, who had just completed eighth grade, had earned a B-plus average and was set to enter Bolsa Grande High School this fall, Golde said.

“He was looking forward to going to high school,” Winter Valentine said. “He had finally made it, and now he can’t go. He was my heart.”

“He loved putting things together,” she said. “He wanted to join the Navy or the Army. He just loved to build things.”

Jeff Kauffman, the father of two of the victim’s friends, recalled how James had helped him repair the alternator on his ’81 Ford Mustang and had been his “detail man.” “As a father, you would love for a teen-age girl to bring someone like that home,” he said. “Teen-agers and guns don’t mix.”

Connie Sanders, 33, a former neighbor of the Valentine family at the Westminster Arms apartment complex, was saddened by the news.

“These kids these days, they don’t think anything about going into an abandoned apartment and fooling around with a gun,” Sanders said. “It’s pretty hard to believe.”

Vicky Fitch, the mother of one of the teens who witnessed the shooting, described the incident as four teen-agers “daring each other.” She said the cousin might have gotten the weapon from a relative or family friend. Detectives, however, said they were unsure where the boy obtained the gun.

“This is an unusual event for Garden Grove,” Abrecht said. “From the description of the boys, Valentine challenged his cousin that the gun wasn’t loaded and the cousin was acting tough.”

Police recovered the weapon near the shooting scene soon after Valentine’s body was discovered, Abrecht said.

The cousin was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he is in stable condition.

The shooting took place in a neighborhood of mostly apartment complexes near the border of Garden Grove and Santa Ana.

Alberto Mendoza, 30, who lives in the area, said the vacant, boarded up apartments in the area often drew crowds of young people and transients.

“Lots of people kept breaking in and vandalizing the place,” Mendoza said. “Homeless people would stay in the building, and I think there was sometimes drug activity.”

After numerous complaints from neighbors, city workers had covered the windows and doors of vacant apartments along Westminster Avenue with wooden planks.

Abrecht said the teen-agers had been using the abandoned apartments as a meeting place.

“Parents need to take responsibility for weapons that they own,” he said. “Parents need to know what these kids are doing.”