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At age 13, Katrina Gonzales accidentally shot and killed a friend.

By age 15, she was in an isolation unit at the state's juvenile correctional facility in Albuquerque, the Youth Diagnostic and Development Center, after repeatedly attacking and injuring center guards.

Today, at 16, a girl once considered mentally disturbed and dangerous has finally gotten the help she needed at a treatment center outside the correctional system, according to records in her case.

Katrina was granted parole in late November to the residential treatment center for girls at Mesilla Valley Hospital in Las Cruces, "where she is making steady progress," a parole board official said.

In July, Gonzales will be free after 2 1/2 years in state custody, said Bill O'Neill, executive director of the New Mexico Juvenile Parole Board.

For those involved with the juvenile justice system, Katrina's case is a stark example, one that will be remembered for magnifying the need for mental health treatment in the state's juvenile lockups.

The state's Juvenile Justice Commission, headed by Tom Swisstack, will soon announce recommendations to increase mental health services to incarcerated juveniles, so teens like Gonzales don't wait so long for help.

"We need to provide all kids with the same opportunity" for services, said Swisstack, director of the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center.

If incarcerated teens aren't getting the services they need inside the lockups, the state needs to seek legislative funding to expand the therapeutic staff, he said.

"The treatment has to be consistent" for teens with mental health problems, he said. "Without consistency, it's difficult for a child to change."

Swisstack said the move for Katrina was apparently what she needed. "They put her in an environment where services are consistent," he said. "The parole board recognizes those changes in a child."

Child advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union, which are pushing for juvenile justice reform, say Katrina's case exemplifies what's wrong with the system.

"It also seems to typify what could happen if we put the resources into mental health services," state Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, an Albuquerque Democrat, said.

The state has not put enough funds into juvenile justice, the senator said.

"We're trying to do things on the cheap," he said. "We should have been increasing funding for the last five years."

When the Legislature meets in January, the Children, Youth and Families Department should request a budget increase to cover the costs of adding new employees, Ortiz y Pino says.

The ACLU, in a recent lawsuit against the state, claims New Mexico has been dragging its feet in enacting reforms and denying rehabilitative and treatment services. The group has asked for court intervention to order the state to hire more professionals to provide treatment and services for incarcerated youth.

And it cites Katrina's case, in particular.

The state's "failure to provide K.G. (Katrina Gonzales) with adequate mental health care caused her to develop symptoms of serious emotional disturbance that were not present prior to her incarceration," the ACLU said in its lawsuit against the Children, Youth and Families Department, which operates juvenile lockups.

"She unnecessarily spent many months in segregation and isolation, with severe emotional distress, due to defendant's refusal to provide her the residential treatment she needed."

Katrina's transfer in November to a mental health treatment program for post-traumatic stress disorder and other emotional distress came 18 months after she attacked and injured guards at the Youth Diagnostic and Development Center, a compound on Edith Boulevard Northeast. She was serving two years, the maximum sentence for a girl her age, for accidentally killing her friend in Las Vegas, N.M.

The ACLU has been closely monitoring Katrina's case and filed formal grievances on her behalf, claiming she was not getting proper care at YDDC.

State officials claimed she was receiving proper care and that they had tried several times to move her to a treatment center. The centers rejected her because she was too violent, CYFD officials said.

After she attacked and injured several guards, Katrina was placed in isolation so she wouldn't hurt anyone else.

She lived alone in a cell; her meals were brought to her; she couldn't go to school with other inmates. Schoolwork was brought to her. She was allowed one hour of exercise outside.

Meanwhile, she was convicted of assault on two guards.

Judges admonished the state for denying her mental health treatment and caging her like a wild animal.

Katrina herself told Children's Court Judge John Romero: "They aren't helping me. I'm worse off than when I came in."