Student Sentenced in Gang Slayings

From Staff and Wire Reports

August 2 2001

A university honors graduate who helped struggling families find homes and inspired high school students to seek his guidance was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for four gang-related murders.

Prosecutors say David Arturo Medina, a 24-year-old with an easy smile, lived a double life: a clean-cut, housing counselor by day who kept an arsenal of weapons and ran with a violent gang by night.

Medina maintains he is innocent. He was convicted July 3 on four counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder. The crimes included a 1996 drive-by shooting that killed a teenager and 1999 shootings that killed three young men.