An Illegal $400 ‘Grand Finale.’ A Charge, One Year Later.
Nearly a year after a Fourth of July backyard show in Buena Park, California turned catastrophic, Orange County prosecutors have filed a felony involuntary-manslaughter charge against the homeowner they say lit the illegal display. The victim was Jasmine Nguyen, 8 years old, of Anaheim.
According to the charging document, the device at the center of the case was a single professional-grade firework “cake” — the kind that requires a license to buy, store, or set off — ignited as a “grand finale.” It malfunctioned, prosecutors say, raining aerial mortar shells into a driveway full of guests.
The defendant is charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent. But the filing puts a hard number on a danger California confronts every summer: the professional-grade explosives that keep reaching backyard parties despite record seizures and a statewide zero-tolerance policy.
- 6yearsmaximum state-prison sentence the charges carry if he is convicted — OCDA
- 100+poundsof illegal “dangerous” fireworks prosecutors say he possessed — OCDA
- $400cakethe single professional-grade firework prosecutors say he lit as a finale — OCDA
- 600k+poundsof illegal fireworks California fire officials seized in 2025 alone — Cal Fire / OSFM
On July 1, 2026, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office filed charges against Earl Decastro, 47, of Buena Park, in the death of Jasmine Nguyen, an 8-year-old girl from Anaheim. The case number is 26NF3370. The filing came nearly a year to the day after the Fourth of July, 2025 party where prosecutors say the fatal explosion happened.
Decastro is charged with one felony count of involuntary manslaughter, along with felony counts of recklessly setting a fire causing great bodily injury and unlawful possession of more than 100 pounds of dangerous fireworks, according to the DA’s office. If convicted as charged, he faces a maximum of six years in state prison. He is presumed innocent unless a jury finds otherwise, and the allegations here are drawn from the charging announcement, not from a verdict.
“There is nothing accidental about buying and lighting illegal fireworks. An 8-year-old little girl is dead and the man who killed her is going to be held responsible.”
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer (R) · July 1, 2026 charging statement
The word prosecutors keep returning to is illegal. This is not a case about a permitted municipal show or a pack of “Safe and Sane” sparklers. According to the DA, it is about commercial-grade explosives in a residential driveway — the category of device California law treats as a crime to possess, precisely because of what can go wrong.
Jasmine had come to the party in the 8000 block of Cornflower Circle — near La Palma and Stanton avenues — with her mother and her younger sister, according to reporting on the case. What follows is the sequence as prosecutors describe it in the charging announcement; it is an account of an alleged crime, and Decastro has not been tried.
Decastro had been setting off fireworks in front of his home for more than an hour, the DA’s office says, before lighting the illegal “cake” as a finale. The device malfunctioned and, instead of firing skyward, shot aerial mortar shells into the driveway where guests were watching. As people ran for the house, prosecutors say, a stash of additional unspent fireworks near where Jasmine was sitting ignited before she could reach safety.
Buena Park police attempted to revive Jasmine at the scene. She was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead of blast injuries. Decastro was taken into custody in the immediate aftermath of the July 2025 explosion; the formal manslaughter charge, the product of a longer investigation, did not come until this month.
1. More than an hour of front-yard fireworks at a residential Fourth of July party.
2. An illegal, professional-grade “cake” lit as a “grand finale.”
3. The device malfunctions and fires mortar shells low, into the driveway crowd.
4. A nearby cache of unspent fireworks ignites next to an 8-year-old. She does not survive.
Source: Orange County District Attorney charging announcement, Case No. 26NF3370, July 1, 2026. Allegations, not a verdict.
A Buena Park man has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the illegal-fireworks explosion that killed 8-year-old Jasmine Nguyen at a 2025 Fourth of July party.
The DA’s office says Decastro bought both legal and illegal fireworks for the party, including a single illegal “cake” firework priced at $400 and purchased from an unlicensed seller. A “cake” is a multi-tube device that fires a rapid sequence of aerial shells from one fuse — impressive when it works, and, when it is a professional-grade unit sold on the black market, well outside anything a consumer may legally own.
In California, the only consumer fireworks that are ever legal are those carrying the State Fire Marshal’s “Safe and Sane” seal — and even those are banned outright in most of the state, including much of Orange County. Anything that flies into the air or explodes — mortars, reloadable aerial shells, professional cakes — is a “dangerous firework” under state law, illegal to buy, store, transport, or set off without a license. Prosecutors say Decastro was holding more than 100 pounds of that category.
That is the crux of the involuntary-manslaughter theory. Involuntary manslaughter, in California, does not require intent to kill; it requires a death caused by a lawful act done recklessly, or by the commission of an unlawful act. Lighting more than a hundred pounds of illegal explosives over a crowd, the DA argues, supplies the unlawful act.
California runs one of the country’s most aggressive illegal-fireworks enforcement campaigns, and the numbers are staggering in both directions. State fire officials reported seizing more than 600,000 pounds of illegal fireworks in 2025 — more than double the prior year — and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has backed a statewide “zero-tolerance” posture with steep fines. And still the black-market cakes and mortars arrive by the truckload every June.
The human toll shows up in federal data. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that roughly 60 percent of all fireworks injuries cluster around the Fourth of July, and that firecrackers, aerial devices, and homemade explosives cause the most deaths and injuries. In its most recent full-year tally the agency logged an estimated 14,700 fireworks-related injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms and roughly a dozen deaths — with reloadable aerial shells and other illegal devices driving a disproportionate share of the worst outcomes.
The pattern in the data is consistent with what the Buena Park charging document describes: not a “Safe and Sane” fountain gone slightly wrong, but a professional-grade aerial device — the exact class of firework that turns a driveway into a blast radius when it fails. Enforcement can pull tonnage off the street. It has not yet closed the gap between what is illegal and what is easy to buy.
The office bringing the case is that of Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer (R), who tied the charging decision directly to the summer ahead. Announcing the filing days before the 2026 Fourth of July, Spitzer urged anyone tempted to light illegal fireworks to “think of little Jasmine’s face first and choose instead to celebrate safely.” The message was as much prevention as prosecution: the office wanted the charge public before the next round of backyard shows.
Charges filed in the illegal-fireworks death of 8-year-old Jasmine Nguyen. There is nothing accidental about buying and lighting illegal fireworks. Before you light one this Fourth of July, think of Jasmine's face and celebrate safely.
Decastro was arraigned and pleaded not guilty on July 2. Bail was set at $50,000; he is next due in court September 11 for a pretrial hearing at the North Justice Center in Fullerton. The felony counts must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and the presumption of innocence stays with the defendant the entire way. Nothing about the charging announcement changes that. What it does establish is that prosecutors intend to treat an illegal-fireworks death as a homicide case, not a tragic accident that resolves with a citation.
A child is gone, and a family that went to a holiday party never came home whole. That fact should not be flattened into a policy debate, and this story does not try to. But the accountability question the charge raises is real: professional-grade explosives, illegal to own, keep ending up in residential driveways — and every summer the odds catch someone. In this instance, prosecutors say, they caught an 8-year-old sitting near a covered table of unspent shells.
The defendant is entitled to his day in court and to the presumption of innocence. The broader record is not in dispute: California seizes illegal fireworks by the hundreds of thousands of pounds, federal regulators count the injuries in the thousands, and the devices most likely to maim or kill are the ones that are already against the law. The Buena Park case is where those two things — a supply the state cannot fully choke off, and the danger it carries — met a driveway on the Fourth of July.
