Santa Clara DA Pushes to Charge Teenage Valley Fair Shooting Suspect as Adult

South Bay prosecutors are seeking to try a 17-year-old arrested on suspicion of a gang-motivated shooting that injured three in the Westfield Valley Fair mall on Black Friday as an adult, significantly increasing the severity of the potential penalties he would face if convicted.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced Wednesday morning that he filed a series of charges against the teenager, including attempted murder for the benefit of a street gang, and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily harm.

Rosen said the charges are the most severe his office can bring in the shooting, and he has also asked a judge to transfer the case to adult court, to “reflect the seriousness and dangerousness” of the teenager’s alleged actions.

“If this case remains in juvenile court, the shooter will face at most three to five years in a secure juvenile facility. I don’t believe that is sufficient in this case,” Rosen said during a press conference on Wednesday morning outside the county’s Juvenile Center in San José.

He said a sentence of several years wouldn’t allow enough time for meaningful rehabilitation.

“Then you’re putting somebody back in the community who basically came within inches of murdering someone at the Valley Fair mall the day after Thanksgiving,” and narrowly missed causing a mass murder, Rosen said.

The teenager, who officials have not identified because he is a minor, could face at least 15 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole if a judge grants the transfer to adult court and he is convicted, Rosen said.

“I think that’s a more appropriate penalty that reflects the seriousness of the criminal conduct and also provides time for real rehabilitation,” he said.

The accused teenager was previously arrested in February for carrying a loaded and concealed gun, officials said. He was free on a probational program, called deferred entry of judgment, which allows a person to eventually have a charge dismissed if they do not commit crimes while free, and often includes rehabilitative requirements like counseling, community service and paying restitution.

The case has resurfaced debate over whether more punitive punishments for youth who commit violent acts would help prevent such crimes, and prompted some community leaders to call for harsher penalties even as juvenile justice experts and advocates say putting young people behind bars for longer will not increase safety.

Greg Woods, a senior lecturer in the Department of Justice Studies at San José State University, said reverting to “tough on crime” laws would only breed more crime in communities and that teenagers and children need to be treated as such.

“We don’t hold legally enforceable contracts between juveniles and adults when it comes to making payments for an apartment or a mortgage or a car. We don’t permit juveniles to purchase alcohol or firearms or to even vote, because we don’t presume that they have the capacity to truly understand the significance of their acts,” Woods said.

“But when it comes to their criminal responsibility, we somehow now have talked ourselves into something that we were entertaining way back in the 1980s and 1990s, that the way we can best preserve our public safety is to guarantee a harsh punishment,” he said.

Law enforcement officials said Monday the shooting in the early evening of Nov. 28 was motivated by gang affiliation. The suspected shooter went to the mall with a group of people while wearing gang-affiliated clothing, spotted an alleged rival gang member, and shot at him, police said.

He fired six bullets, hitting the man he perceived as a rival, narrowly missing a fatal injury, and also hit two bystanders, a woman and a 16-year-old girl, who were not involved in the conflict, authorities said. All three victims were hospitalized and were expected to recover and were released by Monday, officials said.

Rosen said he also plans to file accessory charges against three adults: the shooter’s brother, the brother’s girlfriend and another man, who are all alleged to have helped the teenager escape and hide after the shooting, before he was arrested on Sunday night. Those charges carry penalties of up to three years in prison if convicted.

Officials said the process to request a transfer to adult court could take weeks or more, and would require probation officers to make a recommendation on whether the transfer should happen. The defense and prosecution can challenge that recommendation, and a judge will make a final ruling.

On Wednesday morning, during a juvenile court hearing, Presiding Judge Julianne Sylva ordered that the suspect remain detained in juvenile hall and have no contact with the three victims while the case progresses, and scheduled his next court hearing for Dec. 15.

The shooting, which caused chaos and sent shockwaves of fear through thousands in a crowded mall on an intensely busy day for shopping, garnered national headlines and eats away at the feeling of safety for people in the South Bay, officials said.

San José Mayor Matt Mahan and Police Chief Paul Joseph, earlier this week, called for changes to state laws to allow for harsher penalties against people who commit gun violence, including minors.

“In California, our laws do not treat gun violence with meaningful consequences. And if you’re a juvenile, the consequences are, quite frankly, almost nonexistent,” Joseph said during a press conference.

Mahan said he’d like to “double down” on investments in programs that try to steer kids away from bad behavior and toward jobs and healthy lifestyles, including the San José Youth Empowerment Alliance. One of that program’s guiding principles is, “We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”

However, Mahan also called for “enhancing penalties for those who commit or attempt murder and those who push our young people into a life of crime.”

Rosen said he understands and shares Mahan and Joseph’s frustrations.

“Has the pendulum gone so far that we’re endangering the public? I think that while the laws are much more lenient than I think perhaps they ought to be, I still think there are choices and options for judges to make that can protect this community,” Rosen said.

Damon Silver, Santa Clara County’s Public Defender, said he couldn’t comment about the Valley Fair shooting case in particular, but noted that the state’s gun laws include stiff penalties of up to a decade for having a gun illegally, and many years or decades more if the gun is fired, or if a fired gun hurts someone. He said youth are still allowed to be charged as adults when they commit serious crimes, including gun crimes.

Silver said the state is still “recovering from multiple decades of a mass incarceration mindset,” and reactionary calls to push California back toward a more punitive approach won’t work.

Those approaches led to “destabilizing some of the most vulnerable communities, in particular communities of color, locking up huge swaths of people from those communities for excessively long periods of time, and at excessive expense and with very little metrics to support that it was actually reducing crime,” Silver said.

“It makes people feel better that when you walk in front of them and tell them we just need to punish people more harshly, and they’ll quit doing things that we don’t approve of, rather than asking what are the root reasons, root causes as to why people are in the criminal legal system in the first place,” he said.

Silver said calls for harsher penalties based on rare and tragic outlier cases diminish the great work done by programs the county runs and programs like San José’s Youth Empowerment Alliance, in providing resources and support and alternative pathways for young people.

“Those are the solutions,” Silver said.