Do You Know Where Your Gun Is?

A well-dressed young man stands next to the witness stand in a Sacramento courtroom, pointing to a poster showing a restaurant floor plan. He is calm, almost professorial. His intelligence shines through. There is no emotion in sight.

I do not realize at first that the young man speaking so calmly is Dwayne “Tommy” Deluna himself, an 18-year-old being tried for the murder of David Lamburth, 19. The victim was a young kitchen manager shot by Deluna during a restaurant robbery in Antelope, Calif., in the fall of 1994. Deluna was 17 at the time.

As I sit in on this case and others, I am shocked by how cavalier these young people are as they speak about getting, carrying and using guns.

“As I backed off, I was pointing the gun at him,” Deluna says. “David stood up and he looked at me. I was backing off because I didn’t want to get too close.” (Deluna had ordered Lamburth to join other employees in the back. Hands held high, Lamburth began moving that way.)

“I looked behind me because I didn’t want to bump into any of the tables. The gun went off.”

“Did the gun just go off?” the prosecutor, Joe McGuire, asks. “Obviously, the trigger would have had to be pulled. It didn’t just go off, right?”

“It went off.”

“By itself?”

“Well, no.”

A long discussion transpires about how double-action guns work and whether the defendant knew this beforehand. It is ascertained that Deluna first shot a gun in grade school and had shot them many times since; that he knew the gun was loaded; that the safety was off. He knew that a round was in the chamber, ready to go.

Calmly, cooly, Deluna admits that he picked the .40-caliber weapon he carried in the robbery because he “liked the way it looked.” He never intended to shoot Lamburth, though, he says.

If you didn’t intend to shoot, then why did you cock the gun? the prosecutor asks.

“This won’t make sense to you or to others here listening, but, like, when you see a movie, and they have a gun, well, to let them know you are serious, you cock it back.”

The juror sitting closest to me is motionless, one hand covering her mouth in shock. She knows what I’m just figuring out. Deluna was playing a part. The gun was just another “tough guy” prop.

Which begs the question that rarely comes up in court: Where do these guns come from? How do kids get their hands on one?

No hard evidence exists apparently, but experts have their opinions.

“My very, very, very strong feeling based on following an awful lot of these stories is that the overwhelming number of them are stolen in residential burglaries,” Sacramento Sheriff’s Department spokesman John McGinness said. “A lot of God-fearing, tax-paying, decent people have guns in their homes, but they don’t lock them up. So these kids break in and they hit the VCR, the refrigerator (for beer) and the bedroom dresser drawers for jewelry and guns. That’s your typical residential burglary, pretty much by the book.”

As if following McGinness’ script, the guns used in this deadly restaurant robbery indeed were stolen. One was taken from a batting-cage business; the other was stolen from the home of a retired deputy sheriff.

In another unprovoked shooting that stunned Sacramento, the murder of popular Florin High School student Tomek Ordon in September 1994, the 15-year-old convicted of the crime told police he “found” the gun, but no one believed it for a moment, said Deputy District Attorney Paul Durenberger, who prosecuted that case. In Durenberger’s experience, most youngsters come by guns via two avenues, older gang members or family.

“You wouldn’t believe how many people have guns just lying around their house and have no idea really where they are or whether they are still where they put them last,” Durenberger said. “It’s amazing to me.”

That turned out to be true in another shooting death in which Kenny Blasingame, then 19, drunkingly fired a 9mm handgun at a passing car. Sean Michael Renfro, 19, was killed. That gun was stolen from the home of a friend.

Back in the courtroom where less than 24 hours have passed since we last checked in, testimony has ended and the jurors say they have a verdict. Deluna is found guilty of robbery and first-degree murder, a verdict that could put him behind bars for life.

In the hallway outside, the victim’s mother, Brigid Lamburth, cries. Her friends surround her. They hug, cry and rock. But no one can undo what Deluna and the gun he liked the looks of did to Lamburth’s only child.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diana Griego Erwin McClatchy News Service