Gang Member Gets 9 Years for Shooting
A Newbury Park gang member has received a nine-year prison sentence for firing an assault weapon into a house he thought belonged to a rival, and instead wounding a pregnant woman.
Danny Duarte, 19, was sentenced for the mistaken-identity shooting that he committed with two accomplices in October 1994.
Duarte, 17-year-old William Morris and a 15-year-old boy fired as many as 30 shots into a home on Fallbrook Avenue that was a block away from their intended target, the home of a gang rival, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kim Gibbons said. Instead, they hit Leslie Sullivan in the leg.
Sullivan, seven months pregnant, recovered, and her unborn child was not injured in the attack.
Morris, now 19, and the boy, now 16, were each sentenced to seven years in a California Youth Authority institution, Gibbons said.
A deadlocked jury in Duarte’s first trial caused the judge to declare a mistrial. But a second jury found Duarte guilty of shooting into an inhabited dwelling, conspiracy and use of and assault with a firearm.
Superior Court Judge Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. gave Duarte a stiffer sentence because Duarte was the instigator of the shooting, Gibbons said.
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