Full Recovery Is Expected for Girl, 12, Shot by Friend

A 12-year-old girl accidentally shot by her teenage friend remained in critical condition Saturday, unable to speak but alert and in good spirits, her family members and doctor said Saturday.

Orange County Sheriff’s investigators, meanwhile, are considering whether to pursue charges against the adult who left the gun accessible to the 13-year-old Rancho Santa Margarita girl who fired the single shot.

Sheriff’s deputies said the two girls were alone in an upstairs bedroom in Rancho Santa Margarita when her friend found the 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and pointed it at Shanelle Johannessen. The gun went off and a bullet ripped through the girl’s neck and face before lodging in a wall.

The bullet entered below the left ear, and traveled through the right cheek, shattering the girl’s lower jaw and tonsils but not damaging teeth or vital body parts, said Dr. Gary Goodman, medical director of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital at Mission in Mission Viejo.

“It’s remarkable,” said Goodman. “The bullet missed anything that would have been life threatening. She is awake, and we actually got a smile out of her.”

The girl is expected to recover fully, but doctors are closely watching for infections and are planning to operate on her jaw bone today, Goodman said.

The injured girl’s parents, John and Diane, and her two older brothers, Nathan, 17 and Jesse, 15, spent the night at the hospital, keeping a close watch on the youngest in their family.

John Johannessen said the shooting was a nightmare almost too cruel to comprehend. He said he personally had taken care to rid his home of an old rifle and warned his children against playing with guns, even play guns.

But it wasn’t enough to protect his daughter--an aspiring model--from Friday’s accident, he said.

“I had no idea my daughter was visiting a house where there was a loaded gun,” he said, intermittently wiping away tears, his voice shaking with sadness and rage. “I have always warned my kids about guns. I just cannot believe this.”

John Johannessen said he was told his daughter was rummaging through a closet at the home in the 100 block of Calle Gazapo when her friend approached with the pistol, which she had supposedly found in a briefcase.

When she showed the gun to Shanelle Johannessen, who was sitting down, it went off, the father said.

John Johannessen was all the more upset to learn that the man who property records show lives at the home, Eric K. Braun, worked as a criminal investigator as recently as October 1996, according to voter registration records.

Anybody in the law enforcement field should know better than to keep a weapon within the reach of children, he said.

Braun and Sue Curtis, who also lives at the Rancho Santa Margarita residence where the shooting took place, could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Throughout the day, family members and friends stood by Shanelle Johannessen’s bed, holding her hand if she showed signs of pain and placing her modeling pictures near her bed to lift her spirits.

The young girl promised her father that she would make it through, he said.

“I asked her, ‘Are you going to hang in there for me?’ ” her father said. “She looked at me and nodded yes.”