Teen Guilty in Abortion Clinic Attack

A teenager accused of shooting his pregnant girlfriend at a local abortion clinic, leaving her a quadriplegic, was found guilty of attempted murder by a Riverside County jury Wednesday.

Jeffrey Cameron Fitzhenry, 17, repeatedly threatened the 16-year-old victim before the shooting, saying that she was “depriving him of his unborn child,” according to his girlfriend’s testimony. When she went inside the Palm Desert clinic in April, Fitzhenry followed her, argued with her and shot her in the neck.

“He told her why he did this a week before when he had said, ‘If you take something of mine, I’ll take something of yours,’ ” Riverside County prosecutor Traci Carrillo told the jury in her closing argument. “That was his motive. On April 29, 2004, that defendant made a cold, calculated judgment when he took a loaded gun to the clinic with the intent to take a life, with the intent to commit murder.”

The victim, identified in court only as Sara S. because she is a minor, was not at the courthouse when the verdict was announced.

“She’s still in shock; she’s worn out by the emotions of the day,” said Carrillo, who spoke with Sara S. by telephone after the verdict.

She cried often during Carrillo’s closing argument, squeezing her eyes closed on occasion. Last week she testified that she never thought Fitzhenry would act on those threats “because he loved me.”

Defense attorney Robert Dunn argued that Fitzhenry shot the girl after a “continuous escalation” of anger that reached uncontrolled rage inside the clinic, and therefore only a lesser charge of attempted voluntary manslaughter should be considered.

Dunn said that prosecution witnesses, including Sara S., testified that Fitzhenry fired the gun after he “snapped” when his girlfriend would not leave the clinic, supporting his client’s contention that he did not plan the attack.

“The question is, what was Jeff’s state of mind? Did he have the specific intent to kill?” Dunn argued to the jury unsuccessfully. “He never said, ‘If I don’t get my way, I’ll kill you.’ ... This was classic heat of passion.”

Dunn rested his defense without calling a witness, telling the Riverside County Superior Court jurors that the prosecutor failed to prove her case.

Jurors began their deliberations Wednesday afternoon and took less than four hours to reach a verdict. They also found Fitzhenry guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and a series of enhancements that make him subject to a sentence of life in prison.

The sentencing hearing is scheduled Jan. 6.

“The facts themselves told this story,” Carrillo said. “The jury absolutely did the right thing.”

The prosecutor said this case was about Fitzhenry’s attempt to control his girlfriend, and not about his opposition to abortion. Fitzhenry had told Sara S. he didn’t want her to deprive him of his child, but also questioned her about who the father was, Carrillo told jurors.

“This was not about the baby, but his jealousy,” Carrillo said. “You may not like the fact Sara was getting an abortion, but that doesn’t change what he did. He didn’t take his or her parents to that clinic to talk her out of it. He took a loaded gun.... He intended to kill her.”

After confronting Sara S. at the clinic’s parking lot, and again inside the waiting room, Fitzhenry paused to smoke a cigarette, then walked back inside the clinic, held a gun to her cheek and fired as Sara S. turned away.

The bullet shattered the girl’s spine at her fifth vertebrae, a doctor testified during the trial, rendering her a quadriplegic with spastic arm movement.

Fitzhenry fled the scene, witnesses said, smirking as he walked to his truck. He was arrested hours later, barricaded inside his parents’ home, according to police.

“[Fitzhenry’s] reaction was not fear or surprise,” Carrillo told jurors. “He didn’t help her or call for aid, [and] only a slight tilt of Sara’s head meant he didn’t kill her.”

The fetus was declared dead within three days of the shooting, according to Robert Blythe, an attorney handling the girl’s lawsuit against Fitzhenry.

The Riverside County district attorney did not seek a murder charge against Fitzhenry under the new federal Laci Peterson law, which makes it a separate crime to harm or kill a fetus during an assault on the mother, because of the girl’s decision to have an abortion, Blythe said.

The law is named after the pregnant woman from Modesto whose husband, Scott Peterson, on Friday was convicted of killing her and their unborn child.