A convicted criminal who served nearly a decade in California prisons has risen to the house of the progressive state’s government.
The strange tale of former Los Angeles gangster and California inmate Jarad Nava was profiled in a Los Angeles Times puff piece earlier this month.
The onetime mass shooter — whose victims included children — now works at the California State Capitol in Sacramento.
Nava was convicted of four counts of attempted murder in 2014.
The then-member of the Pomona Don’t Care Krew street gang opened fire on a sedan he thought was carrying members of a rival criminal organization.
Nava claims he doesn’t remember telling his victims they were going to die as he terrorized them; as court documents indicate.
One of Nava’s victims, Yesenia Castro, remains paralyzed as a result of her injuries in the shooting and uses a wheelchair.
Ultra-progressive California Gov. Gavin Newsom commuted Nava’s sentence to merely eight years — a small portion of the 162 years he was originally sentenced to serve in prison.
Newsom himself was even driven to tears of joy upon encountering Nava — free among the public — at the California Capitol, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
“To read a report about somebody, to see a ridiculous overcharging, to consider his age in relationship to that crime, to take a risk on a commutation…and then to see him all dressed up, so proud that he has a job,” the governor said of the encounter.
Nava is currently employed for a committee of the California Senate, interestingly enough, in the body’s Senate Public Safety Committee.
Severe overcrowding in California’s prisons have spurred authorities to seek new means to release inmates, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Nava has spoken of his own responsibility for his crime and apologized to his victims, although he plead not guilty in a 2012 trial.
The victims of Nava’s shooting declined to speak to the Los Angeles Times for his profile in the outlet.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.