Man sentenced to 12 years for fatal East County shooting

A man who pleaded guilty to his role in a fatal East County shooting — which allegedly involved the son of a former San Diego County probation department employee — was sentenced Friday to 12 years in state prison.

Kristian Wolf, 24, pleaded guilty in El Cajon Superior Court to voluntary manslaughter and a firearm enhancement in connection with the Nov. 13, 2023, shooting in an unincorporated area near El Cajon.

Sheriff’s deputies found 27-year-old Javier Medina wounded on East Bradley Avenue just before 10 p.m. that night. He was taken to a hospital, where he died two days later.

Wolf was charged along with co-defendant Hunter Randall White, 23, who remains in custody without bail and awaits trial on charges of murder and attempted murder.

Prosecutors alleged that White’s mother, Carla White, who had worked for the county probation department for nearly two decades, helped her son evade capture by driving him from the scene of the shooting. Prosecutors also alleged she later provided him with a confidential be-on-the-lookout flyer, which indicated law enforcement was looking for him.

Carla White pleaded guilty to a felony count of being an accessory after the fact and a misdemeanor count of unauthorized furnishing of information. She was sentenced earlier this year to one year in county jail.

According to preliminary hearing testimony, White and Wolf were spotted on surveillance footage just before the shooting, walking around an apartment complex near where the shooting took place. Neither defendant was a resident of that complex.

Witnesses told investigators that the men walked up to Medina and issued a gang challenge just before he was shot.

After White’s arrest, he was placed in a holding cell with a confidential informant, but declined to discuss the shooting, according to testimony.

Investigators then told him that they had found his DNA on shell casings from the shooting scene, but this was false, sheriff’s Detective Sean Mula testified. After White was given this false information, he admitted to the informant that he shot Medina, according to Mula.

A search of White’s cellphone also revealed the be-on-the-lookout flyer provided by his mother, according to testimony.

That same phone search showed he called his mother numerous times shortly after the time of the shooting and also messaged her, “Hurry,” and sent her the address of his location.