Disneyland Incident : Ex-Guard Acquitted of Filing False Report

A former Disneyland security guard who police claim faked a story that he was shot in the parking lot of the amusement park was found not guilty Thursday of filing a false police report.

Joseph D’Allura, 26, was fired by Disneyland soon after the Aug. 14, 1983, incident. Park officials said he was fired primarily because he made unauthorized statements to the media. D’Allura has filed a civil suit seeking damages, claiming he was wrongfully fired.

Jurors told attorneys after the verdict in North Municipal Court that they didn’t know if D’Allura faked the shooting or not but said there was enough evidence to show he could have been telling the truth.

That evidence included testimony from a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant manager in Santa Fe Springs, Peter Malevenda, who said he chased a robber and an accomplice by car down the Santa Ana Freeway to the Harbor Boulevard exit and lost track of them in the Disneyland area about the time D’Allura said he was shot.

Another defense witness was Martin Allen Henry, the man convicted of the robbery, who admitted he had an accomplice but refused to give his name.

The existence of an accomplice was important to the defense because the robber did not fit the description D’Allura had given police of the man who shot him.

D’Allura told park officials and police that he was shot in the chest by someone he approached who was breaking into a car. D’Allura, who was unarmed at the time, was sent to a hospital after officials found that a .22-caliber bullet had penetrated his shirt and stopped in the first layers of a bulletproof vest he was wearing.

No One Heard Shot

Anaheim police arrested D’Allura after learning that no one else had heard a shot, and that D’Allura the week before had been despondent over breaking up with a girlfriend.

D’Allura, however, never wavered from his story that he had been shot by someone in the parking lot.

A .22-caliber shell casing was found near where D’Allura said the shooting occurred. Police experts testified that the casing was for a .22-caliber gun found at the home of D’Allura’s brother-in-law. But defense attorney George Peters put on his own expert who testified that the casing could have come from another gun.

Deputy City Atty. George Berenson, who prosecuted the case, said he was “disappointed, and a little surprised.”

Berenson said he was hampered by Judge Margaret Anderson, who limited the amount of testimony he could put before the jury about D’Allura’s breakup with the girlfriend. Berenson also said he thought the testimony from the experts about the shell casing should have been convincing.

‘No Sign of Injury’

“But the biggest piece of evidence we had was that the man got shot but suffered no sign of an injury,” Berenson said.

D’Allura was hospitalized for four days after the incident when he complained of chest pain.

The prosecution contended that D’Allura had shot the bullet through his shirt and into the bullet-proof vest before coming to work at the park that day.

Berenson said he had offered D’Allura a chance to plead guilty to a lesser charge of disturbing the peace, but D’Allura had refused.

Defense attorney Peters said D’Allura felt vindicated by the jury’s verdict.

“But this whole incident has cost him thousands of dollars,” Peters said.

D’Allura is now employed as a part-time cameraman for a local television station, Peters said.