Inset: Saam Rajaei (Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The Palm Beach County Main Detention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Google Maps).
A Florida man has been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for fatally shooting his teenage friend with a revolver he later said he did not realize was loaded.
Saam Rajaei, 28, was convicted in May by a Palm Beach County jury of manslaughter in the death of 16-year-old James Cartigiano. At the time of the shooting, both teens were students at Olympic Heights High School; Rajaei was 17, and Cartigiano was 16.
On Friday, 15th Circuit Court Judge Sherri Collins handed down a sentence of 124 1/2 months in state prison.
The deadly incident took place in January 2016 at a home on Sawpine Drive in Delray Beach, an unincorporated area of Palm Beach County about 10 miles north of Boca Raton.
According to a report from Tequesta-based ABC affiliate WPBF, a group of teenagers had been “dry firing” a revolver that day.
The gun, however, was loaded. At 11:10 p.m. that night, Rajaei called 911 himself.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Rajaei told the dispatcher.
In the background, another friend is heard asking what happened. To which the defendant audibly replied, “He tried to get the gun…I put my finger on the trigger accidentally and shot him.”
In the call audio, Rajaei asks yet another teenager why the gun was out on the counter if it was loaded.
The defendant later told deputies that Cartigiano picked up the gun and was “waving it around,” according to court documents obtained by West Palm Beach-based CBS affiliate WPEC.
So, Rajaei said he tried to take the gun from his friend. The defendant first said they both struggled with the gun before a single shot was fired. The two other friends were not present when the gun went off.
When deputies and paramedics arrived at the scene, Cartigiano was found on the kitchen floor unresponsive with a single gunshot wound to the head. The victim was rushed to Delray Medical Center and taken into surgery. But to little avail – he died five days later.
In a later interview, the defendant said there was no struggle, but insisted he only picked up the gun and fired by accident.
“I put my finger on the trigger accidentally and shot him,” Rajaei told one of the other teenagers there that night.
The post ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen’: Man shot and killed high school friend while he thought he was ‘dry firing’ revolver first appeared on Law & Crime.
