3 Juveniles Charged as Adults in Teen’s Slaying

Three juveniles, including a 14-year-old girl, were charged as adults Tuesday with first-degree murder in 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 on charges of murder, attempted murder and street terrorism and could face life in prison if convicted.

Authorities believe the three were responsible for killing Raul Aguirre, a hard-working senior at Hoover High School, in a gang-related fight Friday fueled by long-standing ethnic tensions between Armenian Americans and Latinos.

Police said that Gevorgyan clubbed Aguirre in the face with a tire iron and that Terteryan then 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 after the killing, Glendale Police Sgt. Rick Young said.

The two boys, both members of an Armenian American street gang, attacked Aguirre 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 Aguirre, police said--grounds for the attempted murder charges.

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 held in juvenile detention, appeared Tuesday afternoon in Glendale Municipal Court and were denied bail. They did not enter pleas, and their arraignment was postponed until May 23.

Under Proposition 21, which voters approved in March, any juvenile age 14 and up must be tried as an adult if charged with murder or certain sex offenses. This is the first application of the law in a murder case in Los Angeles County and the first time on record that the D.A. has filed adult murder charges against a 14-year-old girl, Pipkin said.

“We’ve never dealt with anything like this before,” Pipkin said.

The brutal way Aguirre was killed and the fact that it happened at 3:45 p.m. in front of a school has troubled many in Glendale and compelled authorities to improve school security. School officials in Glendale are also trying to implement an ethnic-diversity class for all students to address tensions between the Latino community and Armenian Americans.

The three suspects were also charged with street terrorism because authorities say they committed the slaying as part of criminal gang activity.

Aguirre, who would have turned 18 this Saturday, was planning to join the Marine Corps after graduating next month. He was not in a gang, and had been working at Taco Bell after school to help pay the rent on his family’s one-bedroom apartment in Glendale, police and family members said.

Funeral arrangements are pending.