Pulled Gun to Protect Himself, Freeway Shooting Suspect Says

A Sylmar man charged with shooting at a car on the Golden State Freeway testified Wednesday that he fired at the vehicle to scare away its occupants after one of them knocked off his pickup truck’s side mirror with a tire iron.

Lewis L. Meeks, 32, is being tried in San Fernando Superior Court on two counts of attempted murder and one count each of assault with a deadly weapon and shooting at an occupied vehicle.

The July 20 incident was the sixth of more than 30 freeway shootings in Southern California last summer.

Meeks’ testimony before Judge Joyce Kennard contradicted accounts by the two victims, Carol Ann Fayne and Michael Fabian Smith, both of Northridge.

Smith, the passenger in Fayne’s sports car, testified that Meeks pointed the gun at him and fired without provocation. The incident began seconds earlier when Meeks tailgated the sports car in his truck, Smith said.

Meeks acknowledged that he “may have been too close” to Fayne’s car. But he said Smith responded by throwing beer cans at his truck and yelling obscenities. Meeks said that when he tried to pass the sports car on the right side, Smith swung at his truck with the tire iron, knocking off the mirror on the driver’s side.

“That’s when I decided I had to take drastic measures to get away from these people,” Meeks testified. “I pointed the gun at the tire, knowing it wouldn’t do anything. It was a bluff.”

Meeks testified that his .25-caliber pistol was loaded with at least one bullet that had half the normal amount of gunpowder. Meeks said the gun “couldn’t have killed a sick chicken, never mind punctured a tire.”

But Fayne testified that a bullet punctured the back of her car. Detective Arthur Castro, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, testified that officers found a hole in the rear of the car that could have been made by a bullet.

Fayne said she and Smith chased Meeks’ truck to get the license-plate number after he fired a second shot.

Meeks was arrested July 21 after police used the number to trace his whereabouts. He is being held in County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

If convicted, Meeks could receive a maximum of 25 years to life in prison, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Norman F. Montrose.