Justice for Kenny Caldera

Not guilty plea in 1991 slaying

ATTACK: Victim was football player, homecoming prince
By C.J. Lin Staff Writer
03/26/2010, Los Angeles Daily News

Nearly two decades after a Burbank high school football player was killed in a drive-by shooting in Van Nuys, his accused killer pleaded not guilty Friday to murder.

Defendant Rodolpho Gallegos, 35, who fled to Mexico sometime after the shooting, was arrested there in October 2008 and extradited to the U.S. in March 2009.

Gallegos was 16 on Aug. 24, 1991, when authorities allege he opened fire at a car, killing Kenneth Anthony Caldera, 16, and wounding two of the four other people in the vehicle.
Gallegos is charged with one count of murder and four counts of attempted murder, each of which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Wearing a blue jumpsuit and handcuffed to a chair, he stayed silent through the short hearing. Public defender Brock Hammond entered the not guilty plea on his behalf.

Gallegos, who in 2002 was ranked second on the the LAPD Valley Division's most-wanted list, is being held on $2 million bail.

Caldera had been voted most valuable player by his teammates at Burbank High and Homecoming Court Prince the year he died, his father, Kenneth Caldera Sr., wrote in an open letter to Gallegos in 2001.

"You murdered him 10 years ago, he was 16 years old at the time, you were about the same age," he wrote. "This person was a sweet young man, a son any parent would be proud to have."

The younger Caldera was riding in the back seat of a car that passed through Blythe Street Gang territory on the way home from a swimming party, officials say. Gallegos, who was in another asked Caldera's group where they were from – a traditional gang challege. Prosecutors say that Gallegos pulled a gun and fired at the occupants of the first car as they tried to tell him they were not gang members, according to the District Attorney's Office.