By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Lovisa Rauch, next to her attorney Dana Ishibashi, apologized
to the family of Julia Alameida in court today. She was sentenced
to one year in prison for Alameida's death.

Teen gets 1 year
for firing fatal shot

Lovisa Rauch, 17, also will be
on 10 years of probation for the
death of Julia Alameida

By Debra Barayuga
Star-Bulletin

Circuit Judge Wendell Huddy today sentenced Lovisa Rauch to one year in prison and 10 years probation for firing a single shot that killed 62-year-old Julia Alameida in August 1998.

Rauch was also ordered to pay $4,775 in restitution to the Alameida family for funeral and medical expenses incurred.

Rauch had pleaded no contest to reckless manslaughter in June and faced up to 20 years imprisonment. She had been initially charged with second-degree murder but pleaded to the lesser offense as part of a plea agreement.

The state had argued that Rauch deserved at least eight years behind bars under the Youthful Offender statute because of the loss of life and the devastation to the Alameida family.

But court appointed attorney Dana Ishibashi said Rauch never intended to kill anyone and retrieved the gun because she was "deathly afraid" for her family. An intoxicated Clayton Alameida had knocked her mother to the ground twice and threatened her father with steel pipes and bars, Ishibashi said.

A sobbing Rauch apologized to the Alameida family for the pain she has caused them. "I know it wasn't right for me to go and grab the gun -- I'm so sorry," she said.

Tears flowed freely among the Alameida and Rauch families and their friends who packed the courtroom as the sentence was announced.

Huddy said while there were contradictions in the sequence of events that led to the shooting, the adults in both families failed to take control of a volatile incident and were both responsible for what ensued.

Huddy denied the defense's motion that she spend her 18th birthday on Sept. 23 with her family, saying imprisonment was part of her rehabilitation.

Alameida's daughter, Bernice Alameida Sasahara earlier testified that the family has lost the glue that kept them together. Their mother was killed just a couple of months after her retirement.

Alameida was a bus driver for the city for 22 years. She was just beginning a new phase in her life _ spending time enjoying her grandchidren and great-grandchildren, decorating her Waialua home and planned to move to the Big Island, Sasahara said.

Ishibashi said Rauch is currently taking correspondence courses to get her GED and has dreams of going to college. The Rauches moved away from their Waialua home shortly after the incident.

Clayton Alameida served six months in prison for assaulting Rauch's mother.