3 Teens Held in Boy’s Slaying : Probe: Tustin boy may have been shot in a dispute over stereo console. Suspects, ages 15 to 17, knew the victim.

Three Tustin teen-agers are being held in Orange County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of murdering 14-year-old Carl Dan Claes over a $2,500 “disc jockey console” his grandfather recently bought him.

“This is not a case of gang violence or narcotics dealings gone wrong. This is a case of children killing other children for no other reason than stereo equipment,” Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Martini said at news conference Tuesday.

The case of teen-on-teen violence--which led to the arrests of suspects ages 15 to 17, two of them brothers--has shaken investigators and residents of the affluent Lemon Heights community where it occurred.

The boy’s body was found May 17 in a ditch about three miles from his house in Tustin. He had been shot in the head at close range after leaving the home where he and his grandfather lived together.

Sheriff’s deputies said they served a search warrant at a Tustin home Monday night and confiscated a .22-caliber handgun believed to be the murder weapon. While they were there, they arrested a 17-year-old suspect who lives elsewhere in Tustin, Martini said.

Two younger boys, ages 15 and 16, turned themselves in early Tuesday morning, Martini said. All three have been booked into Orange County Juvenile Hall and are expected to be arraigned today on murder charges, he said. The Sheriff’s Department will encourage the district attorney’s office to try them as adults, he said.

Investigators also said they confiscated the $2,500 piece of stereo equipment Thursday at a location they declined to reveal. Carl Claes had loaned the 6-foot-long mobile sound system--used at dance parties to play and record music--to the three suspects about a week before he was killed, authorities said.

The boy’s mother, Danella George, said she and Carl had danced to music from the sound system--accompanied by flashing lights--the last time they were together, on May 2. Danella George, who works for the U.S. Forest Service, lives in the Northern California town of Sonora and had been planning to move her son there at the end of the school year.

But Danella George said she was unaware that her son loaned out the equipment or whether he was involved in a dispute.

“I know he talked about rough kids in the community,” she said. “There were fears he expressed to me, and he was glad to be getting out of Tustin. . . . He felt that there were people doing wrong things.”

Dan George, 73, the boy’s grandfather and legal guardian, said he was satisfied that sheriff’s investigators made arrests in the slaying, but was troubled by the suspects’ ages.

“Yes, it’s good news to hear that someone has been arrested,” George said, “but they’re juveniles. What’s going on out there?”

Investigators said Carl’s age has made the investigation particularly trying emotionally. “All of us have children, and it does impact us,” said sheriff’s homicide investigator Leo Vandor.

The ages of the suspects and victim were a chilling reminder of the brutal 1992 New Year’s Eve killing of 17-year-old honor student Stuart A. Tay. In that case, five teens were involved in bludgeoning and suffocating Tay, and burying him in a shallow grave in Buena Park.

In both cases, Martini said, “you don’t have gangs, you don’t have drugs--nothing that lends itself to this kind of activity.”

Authorities refused to identify the three suspects or say which one may have pulled the trigger. Tustin Unified School Board Member Gail Michelsen said the three had long histories of disciplinary problems while in the district and each had been expelled over the past 12 to 18 months.

Tustin Unified School District Supt. Dave Andrews said all three were enrolled at the Horizon Education Center, a county educational program.

Elaine Goodman, a teacher at the Tustin branch of Horizon Education Center, said she was familiar with two of the boys and was shocked to learn they were involved in the shooting.

“It makes me feel very sad to think our students are involved in something like this,” she said. “But unfortunately, this is a reflection of what’s going on in our society.”

Goodman said neither boy was regarded as a troublemaker or a discipline problem.

“Both brothers came to school and turned in their work,” she said. “I don’t know of any fights or confrontations they had at this school.”

Goodman said the boys also were polite to teachers at the school and did not wear gang attire. “I would not have picked these two boys to be involved in something like this,” she said.

The Tustin branch of the Horizon program has about 140 junior high school and high school students, officials said. Although some students there have been expelled from other campuses, the center also includes teen-age mothers, students who have been released from juvenile facilities and others who choose independent study over regular school programs.

“This is very shocking because we have so many success stories at this school,” said Dale Nichols, principal of the school. “It’s just devastating to think life has such little value.”

Investigators described Carl Claes as an average and somewhat mischievous youth who may have fallen in with the wrong crowd in his quest for acceptance after recently changing schools. He did not go to school with the suspects, but was associated with them through his music hobby, they said.

“He had friends who were in a break-dancing club,” said sheriff’s homicide investigator Christine Murray, who appeared with Vandor and Martini at a news conference after working virtually around the clock since the youth’s body was found. “He was not a member. Maybe he had hoped to be.”

Investigators stressed they are still working the case and are not 100% certain about the circumstances surrounding the slaying. Ballistics tests have yet to match the bullet that killed Carl to the suspected murder weapon, Martini said.

It appears that the boy left his home voluntarily the night he was killed, after watching a hockey game with his grandfather, Martini said. Investigators said they believe he was killed in the area where his body was found and may have been driven to the scene by the suspects.

The Sheriff’s Department’s entire 12-member homicide unit dedicated itself to the case, and search and rescue crews also were involved, combing the grassy slopes near the murder site on their hands and knees in search of clues.

The victim, who had recently transferred from Columbus Tustin Middle School to A.G. Currie Middle School, suffered from attention-deficit disorder for which his doctor had prescribed the drug Ritalin. He was also emotionally distraught over the death of his grandmother in March.

A brief ceremony will be held at Currie Middle School this morning, and a vigil is planned by the community group Los Amigos of Orange County at the school this evening.

Tuesday, Martini and investigators wore green lapel ribbons adorned with teddy bears designed by the boy’s mother in remembrance of her son.

“We’ve got a big empty puzzle board that we’ve been putting pieces to,” said Martini. “We got a few pieces last night.”

Investigators received a tip about the handgun last night and were able to serve a search warrant and make the first arrest, Vandor said.

Dan George purchased the sound system in April to support his grandson’s break-dancing hobby and encourage him to stay home, where he could be supervised, his mother said.

“Carl was getting into music, as most teen-agers do at his age,” Danella George said. “He was happy about music and thought that he could become a disc jockey, so we got him the stereo. It also helped him stay home, and that was a big part of it.”

Danella George said she was relieved that the weapon was confiscated. “I’m glad they got the handgun, so it can’t be used against anyone else,” she said.

But she expressed dismay at the common occurrence of violence by juveniles on juveniles.

“When I was growing up, I remember going to the same area where they found my son, and what we used to do there was throw oranges at each other,” she said in an interview Sunday. “But nowadays it’s just so . . . much more violent,” she said.

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Childhood Slayings

Eleven of Orange County’s 71 homicide victims in 1995 have been 17 years old or younger. In six of those cases, the suspect is also a juvenile. All the victims are male. Juvenile homicides this year; age in years unless otherwise noted:

Date Age Location Method Jan. 19 15 Santa Ana Gunshot Jan. 19 17 Santa Ana Gunshot Jan. 24 16 Santa Ana Gunshot Jan. 30 15 Santa Ana Gunshot Feb. 12 17 Santa Ana Gunshot Feb. 15 Newborn Santa Ana Suffocation March 12 17 Anaheim Gunshot April 9 14 Santa Ana Gunshot May 2 16 Orange Blunt force trauma May 17 14 Lemon Heights Gunshot May 18 17 Santa Ana Gunshot

Source: Orange County coroner’s office

Researched by ALAN EYERLY / For The Times