Panel Reviews Claim : 2 Seek $25,000 Reward in Freeway-Shooter Case

A Northridge woman whose testimony helped convict a freeway shooter told a Los Angeles County committee Thursday that she and her passenger are entitled to split a $25,000 reward because they risked their lives by chasing their assailant to obtain his license plate number.

“We did it because we felt he should be in jail before he killed someone,” Carol Fayne, 46, told the county Reward Review Committee. The committee is reviewing her request to collect the entire amount of a reward offered Aug. 4 by the Board of Supervisors for information leading to the identification and conviction of freeway shooters.

Fayne and her passenger, Michael Fabian Smith, 36, also of Northridge, were targets in the sixth of more than 30 roadway shootings reported in Southern California last summer in which four people died and 16 were wounded. Fayne and Smith were not injured in the incident.

Tailgating and Shooting

The couple were returning from a movie July 20 on the Golden State Freeway when Lewis L. Meeks began tailgating them in his pickup truck, according to testimony at Meeks’ trial in San Fernando Superior Court. Meeks then fired directly at Fayne, witnesses testified.

Fayne then pursued Meeks in her sports car at speeds of up to 100 m.p.h. until she obtained his license plate number. During the chase, Meeks shot at her twice, she testified at the trial.

Meeks was sentenced March 15 to seven years in prison on one count each of assault with a deadly weapon and firing at an occupied vehicle.

Two weeks after the incident involving Fayne and Smith, supervisors voted to set aside the reward money from the general fund for a month. The couple were the only people to apply for the reward, said Lawrence Launer, a county attorney.

Fayne’s attorney, Richard G. Sherman, said he may sue the county if his client is not awarded the full amount to split with Smith.

“I don’t see how anything more could be asked of a citizen than what they did,” Sherman said. “I don’t want to threaten the Board of Supervisors. I just want to appeal to their sense of fairness.”

Launer said the three-member committee will recommend to the board within two weeks what portion of the reward, if any, Fayne and Smith deserve.

Some Money Might Be Held

Committee member Oliver Taylor, chief of detectives for the Sheriff’s Department, thanked Fayne and Smith for their actions, but said a portion of the money might be set aside to reward others who come forth with information.

Fayne and Smith told the committee that they have suffered hardships since the incident. Both have gone to see psychologists to help deal with the trauma, they said.

Smith said he lost his job working for a weatherproofing company because he “had this phobia that Meeks, who was an unemployed carpenter, would get his friends to show up at the work site and kill me.”