WEST PALM BEACH, FL – A Florida man has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison for the fatal shooting of his teenage friend, a case that traces back to a 2016 incident involving a revolver believed to be unloaded. Saam Rajaei, now 28, received a 124 1/2 month sentence Friday after a Palm Beach County jury convicted him in May of manslaughter in the death of 16-year-old James Cartigiano.
The two were students at Olympic Heights High School at the time of the shooting. Rajaei was 17, and Cartigiano was 16, when the incident unfolded inside a home on Sawpine Drive in Delray Beach, an unincorporated area north of Boca Raton.
911 call captured moments after shooting
On the night of the shooting in January 2016, a group of teenagers had been “dry firing” a revolver, believing it was not loaded. That assumption proved fatal. At approximately 11:10 p.m., Rajaei called 911 in the immediate aftermath.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Rajaei told the dispatcher.
Audio from the call captured confusion and panic among those present. When another teenager asked what happened, Rajaei responded, “He tried to get the gun…I put my finger on the trigger accidentally and shot him.” During the same call, he questioned why the firearm had been left accessible if it was loaded.
Conflicting accounts and investigation details
Rajaei later told deputies that Cartigiano had picked up the gun and was “waving it around,” prompting him to intervene. According to court documents, he initially said the two struggled over the weapon before it discharged. However, he later gave a different account, stating there was no struggle and that the gun fired accidentally after he picked it up.
“I put my finger on the trigger accidentally and shot him,” Rajaei told another teenager at the scene.
Emergency responders found Cartigiano on the kitchen floor with a single gunshot wound to the head. He was transported to Delray Medical Center and underwent surgery but died five days later.
The case moved through the courts for years before culminating in Rajaei’s conviction and sentencing by 15th Circuit Court Judge Sherri Collins on Friday.
