VICTORVILLE — What was supposed to be a fun father-and-son excursion in the Mojave Desert turned into a horror story. A 13-year-old boy from Simi Valley was shot in the leg by a property owner in Oro Grande while the victim was participating in a high-tech treasure hunting game called geocaching.

Attorneys made opening statements Tuesday in Victorville Superior Court in the trial of 71-year-old Manuel Soria Heim, charged with assaulting the boy with a gun causing great bodily injury.

The boy, his father and two others drove to the High Desert on July 15 for geocaching. Participants in the game use a GPS device to find a waterproof container holding a logbook, in which the players sign their code names after each discovery.

The geocachers were hiking on the hill off National Trails Highway near Academy Avenue in Oro Grande looking for several containers hidden there. They heard a voice from the foot of the hill telling them to ”get out,” Kenyon Harman, the boy’s father, testified.

Harman said he couldn’t see the person but he turned back and began walking back up the hill when he heard two popping sounds. Realizing they were being shot at, they began running, Harman said.

Running side by side with his son, Harman heard the boy scream and fall. He helped the boy get back up and ran to their truck, Harman said. They called 911 but then found the boy had a wound in his leg and took him to Victor Valley Community Hospital.

Deputy Public Defender Luke Byward, Heim’s attorney, told jurors the defendant had fired the gun out of fear that the geocachers were the same people who had robbed Heim about six weeks prior to the incident. Byward said drug addicts had constantly been trespassing on Heim’s property.

Heim saw several people clambering down rocks toward his 15-acre property and told them to leave, but they didn’t, Byward said. So the defendant shot into the air and at the rocks to scare them away; a bullet ricocheted and struck the boy, Byward said.

The jury will have to decide whether Heim had reasonable belief he was under imminent danger and responded reasonably to prevent it. If convicted of all charges, Heim could face about 25 years in prison.

Heim, who doesn’t speak English well, has Spanish-English interpreters to assist him during the trial, which is scheduled to continue today.

Geocaching has become popular worldwide, with 4 million participants now looking for about 1.5 million hidden containers in more than 100 countries, according to geocaching.com.

Members of the geocaching community hide and maintain the containers called geocaches and list their locations on websites. Geocache hunters input the coordinates on GPS devices.

In February, Downtown Disney shut down for 90 minutes following a report of a suspicious object that turned out to be a geocache box, according to the Orange County Register.

According to geocaching.com guidelines, those hiding geocaches need to get permission from land owners or land managers before placing containers on private or public property.

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