Teen gets 30 days in jail for killing of New Mexico man

A judge in New Mexico sentenced a teen to 30 days in jail in the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old man at a park last year. 

Judge Cristina Jaramillo handed down the sentence to Santiago Armijo, 17, who had pleaded to second-degree murder and other charges, according to the Albuquerque Journal. 

The paper reported that witnesses told police they saw the victim, Larry DeSantiago, chase Armijo up a hill, after which Armijo shot DeSantiago in the chest and said “that’s what you get.”

Armijo, who was 15 at the time of the incident, will also undergo supervised probation until he is 21 and be required to speak at high schools about what he did. 

Judith DeSantiago, the victim’s sister, called the sentence a “slap in the face.”

“It devalued human life and allowed our younger generation to see that it’s OK to commit a crime, because they won’t be held accountable for their actions anyway,” she was quoted as saying by the Journal. “It also demonstrated why this generation is acting out in our community the way they do, and that’s because our juvenile laws in the state cater to them.”

Jaramillo told DeSantiago’s family that the maximum sentence she was allowed to impose was four years in juvenile detention. 

“I can only do so much, but, whatever I do, it will not bring back Larry,” she reportedly said. “It will not heal your hearts or the hole that’s left in your hearts. There’s nothing that I can say or do that will help that.”