Teenager Sentenced in Slaying at Mall

Calling the slaying unusually coldblooded, a Superior Court judge Friday sentenced an Oxnard gang member to 25 years to life in prison for gunning down a 16-year-old boy at Oxnard’s Centerpoint Mall last year.

“This was about as coldblooded and callous a murder as I have seen,” Judge Allan Steele said, upholding a jury’s first-degree murder conviction. “It was for all practical purposes an ambush.”

Steele rejected defense requests that James Manuel Moreno receive leniency because the former Santa Clara High School student was only 15 when he shot Felipe Hernandez once in the chest in a breezeway near Mervyn’s department store.

The justice system had given Moreno chance after chance to reform after convictions on minor theft and drug charges, the judge said. But the youth failed miserably.

“He was given every opportunity, and made the worst of it,” Steele said.

Moreno, now 16, showed no emotion as the judge ordered him imprisoned for at least 25 years, the legal minimum for first-degree murder, plus four years for using a firearm in the killing. He is eligible for parole after serving 85% of the sentence.

In pleading with the judge to reduce Moreno’s conviction to second-degree murder, defense lawyer John Klopfenstein said his client feels terrible about what he has done and could still lead a productive life if given a chance.

“He would be willing to die to bring back Felipe Hernandez,” Klopfenstein told Steele.

These factors argue for leniency, the lawyer said: Moreno’s father died early; Moreno had an insignificant criminal record; and he was goaded into the shooting by two older gang members.

“We have a 16-year-old boy who is looking to the rest of his life in prison, but who is rehabilitatable,” Klopfenstein said. “He involved himself in an incident he would never have perpetrated absent the gang. Based on Mr. Moreno’s age and his lack of sophistication, he should be given an opportunity to . . . come back as a good citizen.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. James Ellison argued that Moreno was remorseful only because he was caught and convicted.

The youth had bragged about the killing to friends, Ellison said, boasting that he had “blasted the . . . fool.” Then he told another friend days later that he was “going to blast somebody else.”

“It’s a callous crime,” the prosecutor argued. “He gave the victim no chance whatsoever.”

Steele’s sentence concluded a case that began in the early afternoon of Jan. 25, 1996.

According to trial testimony, Moreno was hanging out at the mall with his girlfriend and two other girls when he spotted two members of his south Oxnard youth gang, an adult and a juvenile. The youths had already been arguing with Hernandez and his cousin, who police said were not gang members. Hernandez had moved from central Mexico only a few months earlier.

“The victim and his cousin had been walking through the mall when they were challenged to a fight,” Ellison said.

Moreno testified that his friends told him to do the shooting. And according to the defendant, he took a gun from one of the gang members, hid it in his cap and then confronted Hernandez and his cousin, who finally agreed to fight.

As the youths left the mall, Moreno acknowledged, he suddenly turned on Hernandez and shot him in the chest.

The victim was helped through the mall doors by two friends before collapsing in a pool of blood in front of Mervyn’s, where he died.

“At trial, Mr. Moreno expressed an excuse as to why he did the shooting,” Ellison said. “He said that he was threatened by [his friends] and that he would have been beaten up, that he was frightened. But we have testimony from his friends that he bragged to several people.”

And, according to a probation report prepared before sentencing, Moreno and his friends were seen laughing as they fled the mall after the killing.

Neither friend was charged in the crime, although Moreno named them at the trial, identifying the adult as Victor Aguiar. Hernandez’s cousin also identified Aguiar as one of those who picked the fight.

Aguiar, a 24-year-old south Oxnard gang member, was arrested in the days after the shooting, but released for lack of evidence.

Records showed that he had been arrested at least 16 times since becoming an adult, and convicted of several misdemeanors. He has since served time in state prison for auto theft.

Aguiar is now involved in the Superior Court trial of Oxnard Police Officer Robert Flinn, who is accused of kicking him in the face during an abortive chase and arrest a month before the Centerpoint Mall killing.