Fremont Marine Pleads Guilty in So Cal Window-Shooting Spree

A pair of 20-year-old Camp Pendleton-based Marines arrested last fall for shooting out the windows of more than two dozen stores and vehicles from San Clemente to Newport Beach in southern California pleaded guilty to the vandalism spree on Tuesday.

Joseph Ikaika Nahale of Fremont and Jesse Jordan Ivie of Gresham, Ore. both pleaded guilty to misdemeanor vandalism, according to court records. Multiple misdemeanor and federal counts of vandalism were dismissed.

Nahale and Ivie were put on three years of informal probation and ordered to do 80 hours of community service and eight hours of graffiti removal, according to court records. Their driver's licenses were suspended for a year.

A 25-year-old woman who works at the Gelson's grocery store in the Monarch Bay Plaza shopping center at Coast Highway and Crown Valley Parkway in Dana Point was resting in the back seat of her car at about midnight on Oct. 21 when the rear and passenger side windows were shot out, according to Jim Amormino of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

The woman saw a red Ford Explorer speeding away from the scene, he said. The woman was unhurt, but the vandalism was estimated at $1,000, Amormino said.

Laguna Beach police were called about 25 window-shattering incidents from Saturday night through early Sunday.

Eight storefronts and 17 vehicles were damaged, Laguna Beach police Capt. Jason Kravetz said.

Laguna Beach police were first alerted to the shootings when they responded to a burglar alarm at about 12:15 a.m. on Oct. 21 at 790 S. Coast Highway, according to Kravetz. Police noticed a business across the street had a shattered window.

Laguna Beach police notified sheriff's deputies, who pulled over the two suspects in a Ford Explorer just before 1 a.m. that day on Coast Highway near the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point, according to Kravetz.

Deputies found two pellet guns in the vehicle, according to Kravetz and Amormino. Three vehicles in San Clemente, two in Dana Point and one in Newport Beach were also damaged that night early into the next day, Amormino said.

-- City News Service