3 Teens Charged With Murder in Stabbing of Glendale Student

Three juveniles, including a 14-year-old girl, were charged Tuesday as adults with first-degree murder for the stabbing death of a Glendale high school student last week.

In one of Los Angeles County’s first applications of newly passed Proposition 21, 17-year-old Karen Terteryan, 15-year-old Rafael Gevorgyan and 14-year-old Anait Ano Msryan will stand trial in adult court and face possible life in prison on charges of murder, attempted murder and street terrorism.

The three are accused of killing Raul Aguirre, a senior at Hoover High School, in a fight Friday fueled by long-standing ethnic tensions between Armenian Americans and Latinos, authorities said.

Police say Gevorgyan clubbed Raul in the face with a tire iron and then Terteryan stabbed him in the heart with a pocket knife in front of a crowd of 50 students gathered in front of Hoover High.

Msryan, the girlfriend of Terteryan, drove the two boys to the scene of the crime and tried to help one escape afterward, said Glendale Police Sgt. Rick Young.

The two boys, both members of an Armenian American street gang, attacked Raul after he tried to break up a fight the two had picked with an unnamed Latino boy waiting at a bus stop, Young said. The Latino boy had flashed gang signs at the other two as they were driving past, authorities said. Terteryan and Gevorgyan tried to stab the Latino boy before they attacked Raul--grounds for the attempted murder charges, police said.

The three were charged with first-degree murder because the stabbing was premeditated, based on the belief that the suspects were carrying a knife with the intent to kill, said Victoria Pipkin, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

The three suspects, who are being kept in juvenile detention, appeared in Glendale Municipal Court Tuesday afternoon and were denied bail. They didn’t enter any pleas and their arraignment was postponed until May 23.