An assistant in California’s Department of Public Safety was previously sentenced to 162 years in prison for shooting and paralyzing a 16-year-old girl before his early release from prison.

Former gangster Jarad Nava, who is now 28 years old, gives credit to California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom for securing his early release from prison where he was serving a sentence for the 2012 shooting that left l6-year-old Yesenia Castro paralyzed from the waist down after Nava shot into the car she was in with the family of rival gang members.

At the time, he was 17 years old and could have served a 30-year sentence if he had agreed to a plea deal. He was sentenced on four counts of attempted murder. : Last week, he was featured in a Los Angeles Times profile which included a photo of himself with soft-on-crime Newsom who gushed over him.

The Daily Mail reported that “his sentence was commuted to 10 years by Gavin Newsom. He eventually walked free in 2020, eight years after the shooting.”

The outlet added:

Film maker Scott Budnick then introduced him to Erika Contreras, the secretary of the State Senate who encouraged him to apply for an internship.

Now, he works as an assistant on a committee deciding on prison reform initiatives.

Newsom, gushing over how he has turned his life around, told The L.A. Times that he ‘cried’ when he saw him ‘dressed up’ in his suit working at the state capitol.

“I came back and started crying in the office,” Newsom said.

“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 Democrat governor added.

“And I remember that meeting because he kept talking about how he felt a sense of responsibility not to screw up,” Newsom continued. “Not for himself, but for others.”

At parole hearings, Nava reportedly said he was “deeply ashamed” of his actions and, according to Daily Mail, he “keeps a letter of apology at home that he wrote to her but did not mail.”

“I want to say I’m sorry for trying to murder you on Sept. 29, 2012. … You should never have had to experience being shot, and I thank God you survived,” he reportedly wrote in the message he never sent. “Though I can never fully atone for my actions, I will spend the rest of my life trying.”

Nava was also featured in a prison reform documentary where his victim was interviewed.

“When they arrested him, I felt relieved. I don’t want him to be dead or anything, I just want him to pay a price,” she said.

Despite her wishes, Nava served only eight years and now works as an assistant for the state Senate Public Safety Committee.