Payout in Valley shooting

Five children who were injured or traumatized when a parolee opened fire at a Granada Hills Jewish community center in 1999 will receive $2.25 million from the Washington State Department of Corrections for its failure to adequately monitor the gunman before his rampage.

Buford Furrow Jr., 46, is serving a life sentence in prison after pleading guilty in 2001 to the shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Center.

The families of five of the victims had filed a $15-million claim against the Department of Corrections, saying that the agency’s staff members failed to properly supervise Furrow or visit his home, and that they should have known he had obtained firearms and ammunition.

The victims who filed the lawsuit were Ben Kadish, Joshua Kadish, Joshua Stepakoff, James Zidell and Nathan Powers. They were all younger than 10 at the time of the shootings.

Furrow, a self-avowed white supremacist, had tried to commit himself to a psychiatric hospital in Washington state in 1998 but threatened staff members with a knife. He was arrested, pleaded guilty and served 5 1/2 months in jail for assault with a deadly weapon.

The corrections agency said Furrow reported as directed to his community corrections officer for several months before the shootings. He had been banned from possessing firearms and alcohol.

But in August 1999, Furrow drove from Washington to Southern California in a van loaded with weapons. He allegedly scouted several Jewish-related services and settled on the Jewish community center, where he fired more than 70 rounds.

Three boys, a teenage girl who worked as a camp counselor and a female receptionist were injured by gunfire. Furrow later walked up to mail carrier Joseph Ileto in Chatsworth, asked him to mail a letter and then fatally shot him.

Furrow surrendered the next day in Las Vegas, telling police the shootings were intended as a “wake-up call to America to kill Jews.”

The families of the three wounded boys and of two children who said they suffered psychological harm while witnessing the shootings filed the claim in 2006.

Washington Corrections Chief Eldon Vail said in a news release that he hopes “in some small way these families will be able to find peace and resolution.”

“I’m sure not one of them would replace the trauma they went through for the money they received,” said Marvin Gelfand, chairman of the JCC Development Corp. in Los Angeles and past president of the North Valley center. “But I hope as time passes and people do recognize their role in what happened, that it would help alleviate the burden of the victims.”

Mike Withey, the Seattle attorney who represented the five families, told the Seattle Times this week that his clients were “gratified by the settlement.”

Withey reached a settlement in January with a Washington pawnshop where Furrow retrieved a pistol he had pawned earlier and used it to shoot Ileto.

The suit filed on behalf of Ileto’s widow was settled for an undisclosed sum.

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amanda.covarrubias@ latimes.com