Boy Names Officers in Alleged Torture

A 17-year-old boy testified in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Wednesday that two former Huntington Park police officers jolted him eight times with an electric stun gun last November in an attempt to force him to admit he had stolen some stereo parts.

“I felt that I was being burned and felt I couldn’t keep my leg still,” said Jaime Ramirez in describing his reaction when the officers applied the metal-pronged device to his left leg. “There was tremendous pain. . . . My heart was hurting and I was having difficulty in breathing.”

The slender Huntington Park teen-ager was the only witness on the first day of the preliminary hearing for William J. Lustig Jr., 31, and Robert Rodriguez, 25, who are charged with one count each of felony assault. They are also charged with one misdemeanor count each of inflicting great bodily harm. Lustig and Rodriguez were suspended, then fired, last year.

Under direct examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence J. Mira, Ramirez said he was walking down the middle of 58th Street near his home at 4 a.m. Nov. 30 when police stopped him.

He said the officer in the patrol car, identified as Eric Ault, began questioning him about the paper bag he was carrying. The bag, Ramirez said, contained an equalizer and other car stereo components.

During the hearing, Ramirez, a native of El Salvador who has lived here about six years, was questioned and answered through a Spanish-speaking interpreter, although he admitted under cross-examination that he “more or less” spoke and understood English.

He said Ault, accompanied by a teen-age female Police Explorer Scout, checked the bag, took it from him, then handcuffed him and put him in the back seat of the car.

A short time later, Ramirez said, another patrol car, driven by an officer he referred to only as “the Mexican,” pulled up. Then another car, driven by an officer he called “the American,” arrived. Ramirez pointed out Rodriguez as “the Mexican” and Lustig as “the American.”

Ramirez said Rodriguez got into the back seat and asked where he got the components and he told the officer he had purchased them from a man. Then, he said, Lustig got in the car, asked the same question and got the same answer.

At that point, the youth testified, “The American took out a black box (the stun gun) and he turned it on and sparks came out.”

But then, the teen-ager said, Rodriguez asked for the gun and questioned him about the stereo components.

“I told him the same thing,” Ramirez said.

At that point, Ramirez testified, Rodriguez put the stun gun’s twin prongs on his left leg “and turned it on.” He said Rodriguez triggered the gun three times on his thigh. Asked if Rodriguez asked any more questions, Ramirez replied: “No. He was just laughing.”

After that, Ramirez said, Rodriguez gave the stun gun to Lustig, who pursued the question of the stereo parts. And again, he said, he gave the same answer.

Lustig triggered the gun five times on the same leg, Ramirez said, asking once, “ ‘Does it hurt a lot?’ ”

Afterward, Ault and the Scout, who had remained out of the car, drove Ramirez to police headquarters, where he was booked on suspicion of automobile burglary. Mira said the complaint was dropped for lack of evidence.

Under separate cross-examinations by attorneys William J. Hadden, representing Rodriguez, and Richard Levine, representing Lustig, Ramirez stuck to his story. But he did admit that he was lying about where he got the stereo parts, although it was not brought out how he acquired them.

The hearing will resume today.