Girl, 13, Sentenced in Attack : Moorpark Student Gets 6 Months for Firing at Youths Who Taunted Her

A 13-year-old Moorpark girl who opened fire on schoolmates with her father’s pistol last fall was sentenced Monday to six months in Ventura County Juvenile Hall for assault with a deadly weapon.

Although no one was injured in the Nov. 18 shooting, prosecutors had asked Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath to send the girl to the Ventura School, the California Youth Authority’s juvenile prison in Camarillo, which houses more serious offenders, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Randy Thomas.

But probation reports showed the girl had no prior criminal record, and her attorney, Deputy Public Defender James Harmon, cited the girl’s troubled past and mistreatment by fellow students at Mesa Verde Middle School.

“There had been a variety of pretty traumatic incidents that had happened to her as a child, and I’m not going to go into details, but she had a lot of built-up anger,” Harmon said of the girl, whose case was heard in closed court. “And there was testimony about a pattern of name-calling and general harassment in school. The judge, in looking at the entirety of this case, said she’s--to a large extent--a victim herself as opposed to being a criminal.”

Shortly after the afternoon shooting, at least one of the girl’s schoolmates and neighbors admitted that he and his friends had been taunting her in a nearby park, calling her “a tramp” because she allegedly had been spreading untrue rumors about them.

Witnesses said the girl grew angry and walked back to her house. There, police said, she grabbed a small-caliber semiautomatic pistol and returned to the park.

Without a word, witnesses said, she began firing, one shot each at three groups of teens, who scattered. About five minutes later, after she had returned the gun to her home, deputies summoned by neighbors arrived and chased the girl down into an arroyo, finally arresting her without further incident.

Judge McGrath sentenced the girl to serve 180 days for two counts of assault with a semiautomatic weapon and one count of resisting arrest.

Harmon said that upon her release, the teen will not return to her old neighborhood because her father has since moved elsewhere in Ventura County, to a community Harmon declined to identify.