Elusive Multi-Million Award for Parents of Slain El Cerrito High Grad

The parents of an El Cerrito High School graduate killed at an unsupervised teen party in a Berkeley Hills home six years ago have been awarded more than half of a $7 million judgement against the killer but are not likely to collect, accordin to the Oakland Tribune.

The slain youth, Juan Carlos Ramos, was fatally stabbed at age 18 by a former Berkeley High School student, Justin Michael Johnson, now 22, who was arrested three years later, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and is now serving an 11-year prison term, the Tribune reported.

The stabbing resulted from what authorities said at the time was a fight over a skateboard, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Johnson was charged also in the stabbing of three other party-goers.

The mother, Barbara Ramos of Albany, realizes she'll probably never collect from the imprisoned Johnson, the Tribune reported.

"It wasn't about the money," the 67-year-old Ramos was quoted as saying about the civil trial late last year in Alameda County Superior Court. "It was about seeking justice.''

The family lived during the son's early childhood in Albany and moved to El Cerrito, where he attended El Cerrito High for 3-1/2 years, according to the Tribune. He was a student at Contra Costa College when he was killed.

The father, Juan Ramos Sr., returned to Mexico after the parents divorced, the Tribune said.

Solving the crime took an unusually long time because witnesses at the party, held at the home of an Albany High School student, refused to cooperate with police.

"The crime haunted the Ramos family and had frustrated detectives," Berkeley police said in a news release announcing the arrest of the suspect in 2009. "Soon after the 2006 death, BPD detectives interviewed dozens of students from Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito High Schools in attempts to gather information for the investigation. Detectives were alerted to MySpace chatter soon after the crime that encouraged partygoers not to talk to police regarding the case."

According to Barbara Ramos, only one person at the party called 911 after the stabbings.

"There were more than 100 teenagers at the party where Juan was killed, but there was only one call to 911," she wrote in a letter to the El Cerrito Journal a year after the murder. "No one even yelled for help."

"There are people who know who killed him, but no one is talking," she wrote. "Why? Is it because they're scared? I'm scared, too, for all the people who come into contact with this murderer."

Among the issues raised in public discusssions after the stabbings were the use of alcohol and marijuana by local youth and the refusal to cooperate with police, as well as the attendance at parties by uninvited youth who find out about the events through social media.