A man who opened fire outside a party in the Talmadge neighborhood and shot a 17-year-old bystander who ended up paralyzed was sentenced Thursday to 24 years in state prison.<\/p>\n
Juan Diaz Velazco, 21, pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault with a semiautomatic firearm causing paralysis for the October 2023 shooting.<\/p>\n
San Diego police said gunfire broke out just before 1 a.m. Oct. 28 amid a fight between two groups of people on Winona Avenue.<\/p>\n
According to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, the shooting happened after “gang members issued gang challenges to rivals outside of a high school party. Diaz Velazco fired the first shots, which hit and paralyzed an innocent girl who was a high school cheerleader.”<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said the gunshots fired by Diaz Velazco, who was 19 years old at the time, struck Brianna Wallace in the back. Wallace, then a Lincoln High School student, was paralyzed from the waist down as a result.<\/p>\n
Wallace, her mother and aunt attended the sentencing hearing, after which she told reporters she felt Diaz Velazco didn’t truly understand the impacts that the shooting had on her.<\/p>\n
“He really changed my life like never before. I can’t do certain things I used to do. I don’t go places I used to go anymore. I can’t be really adventurous,” she said.<\/p>\n
Wallace, now 19, said she’s now focused on school, dreams of becoming a pilot and physical therapy, with aims of re-learning how to walk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who opened fire outside a party in the Talmadge neighborhood and shot a 17-year-old bystander who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,69124],"class_list":["post-135461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-talmadge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}