3 Teens Indicted in Slaying of Glendale Student

Three teenagers have been indicted on murder charges in the stabbing and clubbing death of 17-year-old Raul Aguirre, a Glendale high school student, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

Prosecutors secured an indictment from the Los Angeles County Grand Jury accusing 18-year-old Karen Terteryan of Glendale, 15-year-old Rafael Gevorgyan of North Hollywood and 14-year-old Anait Ano Msryan of Los Angeles of killing Aguirre in a May 5 fight in front of Hoover High School in Glendale.

The two male defendants, Terteryan and Gevorgyan, were also charged with the special circumstance of killing to further the activities of a street gang. Police said Aguirre, a senior at Hoover, was not in a gang.

The slaying, which occurred after school in front of a crowd of students, highlighted long-simmering tensions between Armenian Americans and Latinos in Glendale, according to police.

Police have said the two boys, both alleged members of an Armenian American street gang, attacked Aguirre with a pocket knife and a tire iron after he tried to break up a fight the pair had picked with another Latino boy, identified in court documents as Jimmy Orozco.

Msryan, Terteryan’s girlfriend, allegedly drove her co-defendants to the school.

Because of their ages when the crime was committed, the maximum sentence the boys face is life in prison without the possibility of parole. Msryan faces a minimum 25-year to life sentence if convicted of murder.

The defendants were also each charged with one count of attempted murder in the attack on Orozco and one count of street terrorism.

The case is one of the county’s first applications of Proposition 21, a voter-approved initiative that gives prosecutors the authority to decide whether teenagers should be tried as adults in serious crimes. Defense attorneys for Terteryan and Gevorgyan accused prosecutors Thursday of bypassing Juvenile Court to file the case in Glendale Superior Court, only to take it to the grand jury after the attorneys challenged the constitutionality of Proposition 21.

“I’ve never seen such blatant forum-shopping,” said Mark Geragos, who represents Terteryan.

“To me, this is symptomatic of the fact that they’ve got an extremely weak case,” he said.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney, countered, saying, “It’s not unusual that we take cases to the grand jury to get an indictment.

“We do it all the time, especially in gang cases where there are multiple defendants,” she said.

The grand jury issued the indictment Aug. 14, prosecutors said, allowing the case to proceed to trial without a preliminary hearing. But the indictment was only unsealed Thursday by Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler as the defendants appeared for their arraignment, which was postponed until Wednesday.