Girl, 13, Held in Shooting Attack on Schoolmates

A 13-year-old girl was arrested on an attempted murder charge Monday after police said she grabbed her father’s gun and fired at least three shots at schoolmates outside her apartment complex.

None of the gunshots hit anyone, and deputies chased down the girl in a nearby arroyo and arrested her without further shooting. The girl was not identified because she is a juvenile.

Detectives are still trying to determine why the girl opened fire outside Le Club Apartments on Moorpark Avenue, said Sheriff’s Senior Deputy Ed Tumbleson. “We’re just really happy that nobody was hurt,” he said.

But the girl’s schoolmates say she has had running feuds with several students at Mesa Verde Middle School since moving to Moorpark last summer from Bakersfield.

The distraught mother of one girl said of the accused shooter: “She’s been threatening my daughter. She got ahold of her father’s gun and came out and tried to shoot my little girl.”

The woman, near tears, declined to give her name. But she added, “My daughter did not even talk to her.”

At least one boy admitted that he and his friends had been taunting the girl just before she began shooting at them, calling her “a tramp” because, he said, she had been spreading untrue rumors about them.

“We’d already got out of school, and we walked back into the wash, and me and my friend started calling her names,” said Matt Ray, 12, as his mother, Joanne Ray, looked on. “She went back home, and all of a sudden she started getting mad.”

The girl returned to a small park between the apartment complex and the arroyo, clad in a red flannel jacket and holding a small-caliber semiautomatic pistol half hidden beneath her arm, Matt said. She then pointed it at three groups of youths, firing once at each, Matt said.

“She just shot, she didn’t say nothing,” and the youths scattered, he said.

Neighbors said the girl then calmly walked home, changed into a sweater and walked back toward the arroyo apparently without the gun.

About five minutes later, deputies who were summoned by neighbors arrived and spotted the girl, Tumbleson said. On seeing them, she ran down into the arroyo, Tumbleson said.

They chased her across to the other side, found her hiding in some bushes and arrested her without further incident, he said.

Neighbor Joe Padilla said he was fixing his truck when he heard the gunfire.

“The kids came running by us and said, ‘That girl’s shooting at us!’ ” Padilla said. The deputies who arrived ran after her, carrying shotguns and ordering her to stop, before they finally pulled her out of the bushes, he said.

Det. Ernie Montagna said the girl will be held in Ventura County Juvenile Hall until the charges against her can be reviewed. Although it is a misdemeanor to leave a gun where a child can handle it without supervision, the girl’s father had not been charged Monday night, he said.

The father refused to talk to reporters.

Two of the girl’s schoolmates said she seemed to have trouble fitting in at school.

“She’d pick fights with other people at school,” said Alison Guiremand, 14. “When people made fun of her, she didn’t know they were joking around.”

Added Alison’s sister, Molly, 12, “Everyone makes fun of her at school.”