John Carvajal-Campos, 25, received an eight-month prison sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 2023 death of Ricardo Meza-Ramirez, according to court records cited by the Raleigh News & Observer. The sentence also requires supervised probation for at least eight months and no more than two years.
Carvajal-Campos completed Durham County’s restorative justice program before sentencing, the News & Observer reported.
Meza-Ramirez was 17 and an 11th grader at Cary High School when he died. The News & Observer reported that Principal Nolan Bryant remembered him as well-liked by students and staff. In earlier coverage, ABC11 Raleigh-Durham reported that Meza-Ramirez’s mother described him as outgoing and said he enjoyed soccer.
The shooting occurred on Nov. 26, 2023. Search warrants described in the News & Observer’s reporting say Carvajal-Campos told investigators he was posing for a photo beside Meza-Ramirez with a shotgun when it fired, and later said he had forgotten it was loaded. He drove Meza-Ramirez to Duke University Hospital shortly before 2 a.m.; the newspaper reported that a hospital police officer relayed Carvajal-Campos’s account of the shooting to investigators.
