TEEN DEALER MAY BE TRIED AS ADULT

Girl Died After Taking `Ecstasy' Pill

The 17-year-old drug dealer had been up until 5 a.m., trying to help a
dying girl who had taken one of his ``ecstasy'' pills, police said.

When he awoke that afternoon, there was work to do: It was prom night,
and he figured he could sell more pills.

He never got the chance. Belmont police picked up the boy that April
afternoon and questioned him about his role in the death of
14-year-old Irma Perez. Now prosecutors want to try him as an adult.

The boy's attorney, Vincent O'Malley, said this week his client was a
``naive'' kid with no criminal record.

But San Mateo County prosecutors say differently. Throughout two days
of testimony, officers have described how he peddled drugs at a
shopping center. They say he and his partner sold 50 pills a week and
it was his job to weigh the drugs -- including cocaine -- because he
was more adept at using the scale.

The teen's name is being withheld because he is still considered a
juvenile.

But Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Raffaelli is trying to convince
a judge that the teenager is such a sophisticated criminal that he
should be tried in adult court, where the penalties are much stiffer
if he is convicted of the charges against him, including involuntary
manslaughter.

The teen ``provided the drugs that killed this child,'' Raffaelli said.

What also is emerging from this week's testimony is a world where
teenagers blithely buy and sell drugs under the noses of adults.

When two middle school girls wanted to buy drugs for their April 23
slumber party, they went to the teenager's Belmont home -- where he
lives with his parents -- to buy three ``double-stacked'' ecstasy
pills, so called because they are thicker than the typical pills and
are reputed to be more potent. Each girl took a $20 pill and saved one
for Irma, Belmont officer John Bradley said.

The girls had had dealings with the 17-year-old before. Just a week
before the slumber party, he and his alleged drug partner, Antonio
Rivera, reportedly picked up the 13-year-old at a relative's house and
took her to Rivera's apartment, where she was offered lines of
cocaine, Bradley said.

During his police interview after Irma was hospitalized, the teen said
he wanted to come clean with a detective -- and pulled out six ecstasy
pills from his sock.

The baggies, gram scales and most of the drugs were kept at Rivera's
apartment, police say. Defense attorney O'Malley said that suggests
Rivera, 20, ran the operation and the teenager was hardly an equal
partner. Rivera, who also was arrested in connection with the case,
has accepted a plea deal and faces a maximum of eight years in prison.

In court Thursday, the teenage defendant sat expressionless throughout
the testimony. He looked like any other gawky teenager -- too-large
ears, a few pimples. A face caught between man and boy.

His parents sat beside him, watching the lawyers and witnesses but
rarely glancing at their son. Sometimes they bowed their heads, as
during the excruciating details of how Irma suffered for nearly 10
hours before being taken to the emergency room.

Doctors testified that Irma, 14, could have been saved had she gotten
medical help earlier. But after she became ill at the slumber party,
her friends called their dealer instead.

Prosecutors contend the 17-year-old didn't call for help because he
didn't want to get in trouble. It was not until the next morning that
the parents of the girl who hosted the party found Irma and called her
sister, who called an ambulance.

Outside court, O'Malley said the teen had made a ``stupid, naive,
good-faith'' effort to help. His advice had included feeding Irma
bread and assuring her friends that she was only having a ``bad trip.''

In fact, her brain was being starved of oxygen by the erratic
breathing and possible seizures she endured after taking the ecstasy.
A pathologist said Irma's brain stem softened, and her cerebellum
started to dissolve.

Several days after the fateful party, her family took the brain-dead
girl off life support.

Irma's sister, Imelda, sat behind the teenage defendant throughout
this week's hearings, occasionally crying. But during a court break,
she spoke with the teenager's parents, and each asked how the other
was holding up.

``I heard he's a good kid,'' Imelda Perez said later. Testimony into
the matter will continue today and Perez, a mother of two, is unsure
whether she wants the teen tried as an adult.

``I see him as a child,'' she said. ``At the same time, I see him as
an adult when he was there with my sister.''