Two Teen Girls Sentenced for Attempted Murder

 

VISTA - Two Escondido girls who tortured, beat and stabbed another girl -- the perceived romantic rival of one of the defendants -- were each sentenced on Thursday to more than 17 years in state prison.

Karina Amador, 15, was sentenced to 18 years and four months behind bars by Vista Judge Runston Maino. The teenager pleaded guilty in July to attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and burglary charges.

Jovana Gudino, also 15, was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison. She pleaded guilty to attempted murder, burglary and trying to dissuade a witness.

Both girls, who were prosecuted as adults, admitting attacking the victim in her home on May 3, 2009. Authorities said Amador saw the victim -- a fellow eighth-grader -- as a romantic rival.

At a hearing last December, Judge Theodore Weathers said Amador orchestrated and executed the plan to attack the 14-year-old victim in her own home.

Weathers said Amador donned two layers of clothing, including a jacket with a hood to cover her face. He said the victim was attacked at her front door, pushed into the living room, then into her bedroom.

The victim was cut and stabbed, then told to shower off the blood, authorities have said.

After the attack, Amador burned her outer layer of clothing and threw it in a Dumpster, Weathers said. Later, the defendant showed Escondido police detectives how she tried to stab the victim's organs, the judge said.

At another hearing this year, the victim, now 15, testified that the defendants beat her in the head with her home phone, stabbed her five times in the back and carved her back.

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