A Hard Sentence to Say

Eleuterio Ocampo didn’t mean to kill anyone when he fired a gun to scare off children who had been pelting his Santa Ana home with lemons--nobody disputes that.

But a man was killed by that bullet, and a judge said Friday he had no choice but to send the 69-year-old Ocampo to prison.

“I look at you and my heart breaks,” Orange County Superior Court Judge David O. Carter said during Ocampo’s sentencing after being convicted earlier this year on charges of involuntary manslaughter.

“We have a legion of letters saying you’re a nice, passive man, that you’re an exceptionally good person, a good provider, a person of great worth,” Carter said. “But another side of me looks at the victim’s family, and [they are] destroyed.”

According to prosecutors, Ocampo fired a handgun at the ground on Sept. 28, 1996, to scare away neighborhood youngsters who repeatedly stole fruit from his lemon tree and then used his house for target practice.

But a bullet ricocheted and went through his neighbors’ garage door, killing Marco Antonio Fuentes, 22, as the young man sat at a desk studying.

During Ocampo’s trial, Fuentes’ parents testified that they found their son near the telephone, where he apparently tried to call for help as he lay dying.

The family had converted the garage into a living space for their son, who was studying for a career as a psychologist.

Ocampo, who maintained during his trial that he was innocent, was sentenced to two years in state prison. In passing that sentence, Judge Carter told Ocampo that, although his action was understandable, it was unacceptable.

“Someone throwing fruit into my yard would infuriate me,” Carter said. “In your world, you acted appropriately, but in our world, there are so many other things that could have been done without a firearm. This is a terribly irresponsible act. Your willingness to use guns can only be life-threatening.”

Ocampo, dressed in jeans and a Western-style shirt, sat stone-faced through the sentencing procedure, staring at the judge. He occasionally leaned over to consult an interpreter.

After Carter finished his statements, Ocampo, handcuffed and in tears, said goodbye to the dozens of weeping friends and relatives who had packed the Santa Ana courtroom.

Before being led away, Ocampo hugged his wife, Sabrina, and gave her a final pat on the cheek. He tried to smile but broke down and sobbed instead.

Said son Rogel Ocampo, 37: “We don’t want to talk. We are very upset.”

Ocampo’s lawyer, Linda Van Winkle, said life will be difficult for the Ocampo family while the patriarch is in prison. “They need him desperately,” she said. “He holds the family together.”

Prosecutors echoed the judge’s statements about the complexity of the situation.

“Nothing about the case was easy,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan McNerney said. “We considered [Ocampo’s] age and good background and elected to file involuntary manslaughter charges.”

Among those at the sentencing was the victim’s brother, Jorge Fuentes, 21. “We just wanted him to get punished for an irresponsible act,” he said of Ocampo. “We ourselves pay for what we’ve done.”