A young convict and alleged gang member had been released from jail a little more than a day before he shot and killed Los Angeles High School football star Jamiel Shaw Jr., LAPD Chief William J. Bratton said Tuesday.
On the same day mourners attended the 17-year-old's funeral in the Crenshaw district, authorities announced that the alleged gunman, Pedro Espinoza, 19, had been formally charged with Shaw's death. Espinoza, according to officials, is a member of the 18th Street gang and had spent nearly four months in a Los Angeles County jail for exhibiting a firearm and resisting arrest before he was released March 1, 28 hours before Shaw's death.
"It was spontaneous," Bratton said of the killing. "He was a gang member. He saw someone else he thought was from an opposing gang and he immediately, almost intuitively, popped out of that car and shot that young boy twice.
"He assassinated him just on the belief the other individual may have been a gang member. That is what we are up against in this city, sociopaths like that who just got out of jail and within a day had a gun and in an instant took that young boy's life."
The charge of murder with special circumstance enhancements could carry the death penalty.
Shaw, who was not a gang member, was only three doors from his home in Arlington Heights on March 2 when he was fatally shot. Two men in a car had pulled up next to him, asked if he belonged to a gang, and then shot him when he apparently didn't answer, authorities say.
After hearing the gunshots, Shaw's father ran outside to find his son wounded next to a tree that the two had planted with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa almost three years ago as part of the city's Million Trees Initiative. The boy later died in a hospital.
Several tips from the public led to Espinoza's arrest late Friday night, authorities said.
Detectives continue to search for the second, unidentified person in the vehicle. Espinoza appeared in a downtown courtroom Tuesday, but his arraignment was postponed until March 25. He is being held without bail.
Before the killing, Espinoza had been in jail since Nov. 18, according to Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore. While incarcerated, he was sentenced on Jan. 22 to 180 days in jail with credit for time served, records show. Espinoza's record shows that he also was convicted of disturbing the peace.
