A grieving SoCal mother says the killer of her 14-year-old son will go free – thanks to a woke criminal justice law backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Maria Gill, whose football star son Jeremy Rosales, nicknamed “Tank,” was gunned down near the family’s Victorville home in January, told The Post that one of her boy’s alleged assailants, aged 16, will be released by the time he’s 25 under California’s Proposition 57.
“Proposition 57 –that’s all Gavin Newsom,” said Gill, a retail worker who last saw her son on the morning of Jan. 16, the day he was shot and killed. “It’s affecting us victims and families.”
Backed by then-Lt. Gov. Newsom and signed into law in 2018 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, Proposition 57 aimed to reduce the state’s prison population in part by eliminating the ability of local prosecutors to try juveniles as adults.
Instead, prosecutors operating under the controversial law must seek a hearing for a jurisdiction change and prove that the accused criminal can’t be rehabilitated in a juvenile corrections setting.
Gill said her son, the Oak Hills High School standout lineman, was lured to Mojave Vista Park in Victorville after dinner on a Friday night.
The popular hangout spot with local kids less than a mile from their house frequently hosted football practices, she said.
But for reasons that remain a mystery, that night Jeremy was shot near the intersection of Glen Canyon Lane and Burwood Avenue in the residential area.
San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Deputies said they were called to the scene at about 8:21 p.m. and found the 14-year-old alive but badly wounded. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but later died, cops said.
San Bernardino detectives investigated the case and two weeks later arrested Abel Ramirez, 27, and an unnamed 16-year-old on murder charges for the killing of Rosales.
The accused killer teen now being held at High Desert Juvenile Detention Center and Ramirez is locked up at High Desert Detention Center on $1 million bail, officials said.
Ramirez pled not guilty and is due in court for a preliminary hearing on Thursday.
Gill said investigators told her that the teen is the nephew of Ramirez, but the motive of the pair remains unknown to her.
Jeremy was a dedicated football player at Team Elite Sports Academy and excelled academically at Oak Hills High School, his mom said.
A GoFundMe page created to help his family cover funeral expenses said, “Tank wasn’t just a teammate, he was family.”
The fundraiser said: “His loss has shaken our community to its core.”
Roughly 300 people attended a vigil in Hesperia to honor Jeremy after he died, where mourners held one final football chant in his honor, accompanied by candlelight and a balloon release.
“Humble. Hard worker. Straight A student. Great son. Great teammate. Perfect student-athlete,” one of Jeremy’s coaches, Elliott Reyes told CBS News. “Jeremy by far didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”
A spokeswoman for Newsom said Prop 57 was overwhelming supported by the voters in the 2016 general election — before Newsom was elected in 2018.
Gill said Prop 57 ought to be reformed and permit prosecutors to charge teens as adults for violent crimes.
She supports other victims’ families pushing for change to the law, such as Central Valley dad Stephen Quick, whose son Caleb last year was shot and killed in a McDonald’s parking lot.
Gill and Quick were among a group of victims’ loved ones who traveled to Sacramento to protest for change to Prop 57 last week.
“It’s been so hard for me to overcome, knowing that my son is never going to come home,” Gill said tearfully.
“If a juvenile is willing to commit a crime, then I feel that California needs to have a harsher punishment,” she said.
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