Local News in Brief : Tough Sentence for Gang Graffiti
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A street gang member was sentenced Thursday to 130 days in County Jail for spray-painting the name of his gang on a house--a sentence prosecutors said was unusually severe for a graffiti charge.
Miguel Angel Gonzalez, 18, a member of the West Side Wilmas, a Wilmington-area street gang, was arrested at midnight Feb. 18 near the intersection of Wilmington Boulevard and Mar Vista Avenue.
Police found him spray-painting his gang’s name, “WSW,” in three-foot-high letters on the side of a house, city attorney’s office spokesman Ted Goldstein said.
In addition to the jail sentence, San Pedro Municipal Judge Roy Ferkich ordered Gonzalez to perform 100 hours of community service and placed him on two years probation.
Goldstein called the sentence “very unusual,” noting that graffiti offenders usually receive community service sentences and “little to no County Jail time.”
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