Teen Convicted of Shooting at Group of Schoolmates

A Juvenile Court judge on Wednesday convicted a 13-year-old Moorpark girl of firing a semiautomatic pistol at a group of her classmates last month.

The girl, whom her attorney said had never fired anything other than a BB gun before the incident, could now spend more than 11 years in a California Youth Authority facility.

Judge Charles McGrath sustained two counts of assault with a semiautomatic handgun and a single count of resisting arrest. He scheduled a Jan. 6 hearing to determine how long the girl will be confined.

The prosecution’s original charges included one count of attempted murder, which was dropped before the hearing began Monday.

McGrath rejected Deputy Public Defender James Harmon’s request that the assault charges be reduced to two counts of willfully discharging a firearm with gross negligence. Harmon had argued that the evidence showed the girl was trying to scare two schoolmates who had been taunting her rather than actually shoot them. No one was hit by the gunshots.

“I’m disappointed,” Harmon said following the closed-door trial. “I thought the evidence supported a lesser charge. [But] I’m not terribly surprised by the ruling.”

Had McGrath ruled in favor of the defense, the lesser charges could have been considered either a felony, which along with the resisting-arrest charge carries a maximum of 52 months, or a misdemeanor, which would result in confinement of 20 months.

Though he argued to have the charges reduced, Harmon acknowledged that the counts should still be felonies.

“I think, frankly, they should have been sustained as felonies with the possibility of being reduced to misdemeanors at a later date,” he said. “Luckily, nobody got hit.”

Harmon said he does not know whether his client will appeal. “She feels really bad about what happened,” he added.

The girl will remain in the Clifton Tatum Center in Ventura, the county’s juvenile lock-up facility, until McGrath orders her confinement in a permanent holding facility, according to Harmon.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Randy Thomas, head of the district attorney’s juvenile crimes unit, said he was pleased with the ruling.

“The conduct was extremely dangerous and could have resulted in a tragedy,” he said. “I think the judge made a decision that was more than warranted by the evidence.

“Before firing the gun in the vicinity of the two victims, the minor either accidentally or deliberately fired the weapon in the house where she got it,” Thomas said. “So certainly when she committed the offense, she knew those were real bullets coming out of that weapon.”

Harmon said the shooting was to retaliate against two schoolmates who along with several others had been taunting the girl since early September over a private matter that took place over the summer.

On Nov. 18, the girl took her father’s empty gun from a shelf in their home and loaded it with bullets she found in a drawer, Harmon said.

After the shooting, the girl returned the still-loaded gun to her house and went back outside. She was soon arrested in a nearby arroyo after a brief chase by sheriff’s deputies.

The district attorney’s office is not expected to file a misdemeanor charge against the girl’s father for leaving the gun in an accessible place.

Authorities determined that the gun was not loaded when the girl took it--a requirement for the father to be cited.