The 17-year-old boy walked across Valley Fair shopping mall on Black Friday, police said, accompanied by a young woman, her baby in a stroller and a loaded semi-automatic handgun.
When he encountered a man in rival gang colors on the mall’s second floor, police said, nothing seemed to deter him: not his recent arrest and probation on a weapons charge, not the mall’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras and not the potential of hitting innocent shoppers on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
Cameras from all directions picked up a burst of at least six rapid fire gunshots, the screams and the panic as the teen’s alleged 28-year-old target, an 18-year-old woman and 16-year-old girl, who were emerging from a store and didn’t know each other, collapsed on the marble floor outside the Fresh Society clothing shop, around the corner from an entrance to Macy’s, according to store videos and law enforcement sources.
The violent outburst, which caused injuries, but not death, has renewed the debate over California’s juvenile justice system and poses the question: Would harsher legal consequences for young offenders deter violent crimes or is this an example of adolescent impulsivity that needs more mercy, understanding and rehabilitation?
The Black Friday shooting marks the second time in 10 months a juvenile has been arrested in a violent incident at a San Jose mall. On Valentine’s Day, a 15-year-old boy on a date at Santana Row, across the street from Valley Fair, was stabbed to death after being confronted by suspected gang members. The boy accused of killing the teen was just 13 years old. His murder trial in juvenile court is set for trial Feb. 3. But even if convicted, he might face only months in juvenile custody.
At a news conference Monday — three days after the Valley Fair shooting — San Jose’s mayor and top law enforcement officers laid blame on what they criticized as California’s lenient laws.
“When our juvenile laws are so weak,” Police Chief Paul Joseph said Monday, “young offenders feel almost no fear of consequences.”
But not everyone agrees. Santa Clara County Public Defender Damon Silver, in an interview Tuesday, said calls for harsher penalties are “misguided.” Returning to a “mass incarceration mindset” is a bad idea, he said. A system that encourages juvenile rehabilitation, he said, has helped San Jose remain one of the safest big cities in the country.
“Decades of research makes clear we cannot punish our way out of tragic, but rare, instances of violent acts by our youth,” said Silver, whose office is not representing the teenager. “True public safety comes from investing in young people and communities that are struggling, not messaging they deserve to be thrown away.”
The 17-year-old is expected to be arraigned and formally charged in juvenile court Wednesday morning, where prosecutors are expected to ask a judge to move the case to adult court where he could face harsher penalties. The 21-year-old woman pushing the stroller, who apparently is the girlfriend of the suspect’s brother, was also arrested after authorities say she may have helped him escape before he was arrested 48 hours later. It’s uncertain whether she will be arraigned Wednesday or on what charges.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who reviewed several surveillance videos of the attack, said teenagers with guns “need to be dealt with very, very seriously with accountability.”
“I agree that the male brain is not fully formed until the early, mid 20s,” Rosen said. “However, that means a teenager with a gun is incredibly dangerous — in some sense, more dangerous than a 30 year old with a gun.”
The shooting is still being investigated and it’s not clear exactly what started the violence or whether the teenager might make a case for self defense. The police chief said the suspect and target did not know each other. The clash, he said, appeared to be “spontaneous.” The two teenage women were shot in their legs. The man was shot in the chest, but avoided a life-threatening injury. All three were released from the hospital by Monday.
The cacophony of gunfire that hit the three victims and shattered a glass railing overlooking the ground floor sent hundreds of shoppers fleeing into nearby stores, squeezing into tiny storage rooms and barricading themselves with cardboard boxes full of merchandise.
Mainland Skate and Surf shop manager Luke McLeod directed terrified shoppers to the back of the store and rolled two big display cases of sunglasses and watches to block the glass entry doors.
A security camera at Sole & Laces nearby captured the sound of six gunshots and a woman with a baby screaming, “Lock the door! Lock the door!”
“It was fight-or-flight mode, just for survival,” store manager Chris Jue said.
Hot Topic streetwear shop was packed with about 50 customers when Sophia Jackson, a 22-year-old store manager, ushered them into the back and urged calm.
Sophia Jackson, a manager at Valley Fair’s Hot Topic, explains the terror and dread she felt after the Black Friday shooting sent shoppers running for cover in her store, including a woman with three small children who hid behind clothing racks. (Julia Prodis Sulek/ Bay Area News Group)
“We couldn’t fit everyone in our back room, so we were kind of all huddled underneath these rounders of clothes,” she said. “I had an associate who was sobbing and crying.”
When the main store manager directed everyone to move to a back hallway, Jackson said, one mother crouching on the floor with her three small children and calling out for a fourth she had been separated from, was paralyzed with fear.
Youth advocates have long held that more emphasis should be placed on rehabilitation and solving the root causes of youth and gang violence rather than punishment.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan pointed to the city’s Youth Empowerment Alliance as a model for providing job opportunities, gym nights, tattoo removals, addiction treatment, counseling and other programs to help curb violence.
“There can be barriers to turning your life around, and we should be able to acknowledge that and help people seek a better life,” Mahan said. “But at the same time, it is unacceptable for the broader community, law abiding people just working and trying to live their lives, to have to deal with the fear and uncertainty that comes from a system that is failing to intervene in patterns of repeat offenses.”
Whether juveniles in general should face harsher consequences is “complicated,” Jackson said, because “you don’t know whether to blame that person” or the adults in their lives. But the Valley Fair shooter should “reap the consequences,” she said.
“He put everyone in that mall at risk that day, not just from the gun, but from the stampedes of people, separating children from their families,” she said.
Diana Gutierrez is living with the consequences of youth violence. Her nephew, David Gutierrez was the teenager stabbed to death at Santana Row in February after being confronted by suspected gang members who had first assaulted a shopper outside a shoe store in Valley Fair. She, along with David’s mother and other relatives, have been outspoken advocates of harsher penalties.
“When are lawmakers and authorities going to realize that whatever we’re doing, it’s not working, and it needs to change?” she said. “It’s the holidays, and one day you’re trying to fight for a TV and the next you’re trying to fight for your life. That’s crazy.”