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":3,"featured_media":519181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3549,7264,69942,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-519180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-sandiego","13":"tag-talmadge","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}