Tried as Adult : Slaying of Boy, 10, Was an Accident, Youth Testifies

A 17-year-old charged with killing a Pacoima boy testified Monday that he fired his gun only to scare two gang members who he believed were beating up a youth in his neighborhood.

Testifying for the first time in the four-week trial, the defendant said the July 19 killing of 10-year-old Alejandro Salazar was an accident.

“I don’t have the heart to shoot anybody,” he said in a soft voice. “I didn’t want to shoot nobody at all--especially a 10-year-old.”

The teen-ager testified that after he realized the boy had been hit, he wanted “to get drunk and try to forget about it, if I could.”

Salazar died after a bullet struck him in the back of the head as he stood with a group of children near Pacoima Park about 5:30 p.m.

Though he is not yet 18, the defendant, charged with first-degree murder, is being tried as an adult.

A tape-recording of his confession that he committed the shooting, taken by police July 20, was played to the jury last week. Although he continues to say that he fired his gun, he has changed his account of the incident since he was originally questioned by police.

He initially said that he fired his gun because he saw two youths, who had guns, beating up a 14-year-old boy. He still says that he shot in the direction of the youths, but he now says he did not actually see them fighting. He testified that he heard that the men had been fighting with the 14-year-old.

The defendant told the court he initially lied to police because he was nervous.

His attorney, Deputy Public Defender James M. Coady, said his client clearly fired the two shots that killed the boy. But the teen-ager did not intend to hurt anyone, Coady said.

The bullets he fired ricocheted off the street, with one of them striking the 10-year-old, Coady said.

The 17-year-old admitted that he fired his .25-caliber automatic pistol in the direction of the two men. One of them, Otis Thomas, testified earlier in the trial that he was a member of the Crips gang.

Thomas testified last week that he and the other man actually had intended to apologize and return a baseball cap they had grabbed from the youth.

Thomas testified that he thought the 14-year-old was a member of the Bloods gang because he was wearing red sweat pants, Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Nison said. When Thomas later saw initials in the youth’s baseball cap that signified he was a member of Project Boyz, a gang friendly with the Crips, the two men returned to apologize, Nison said.

However, the defendant disputed this version of events.

“No hard-core gang-banger would come back and apologize,” he testified Monday. “It would get around, and people would think he was a punk.”

Nison alleges that the teen-ager on trial was a gang member at the time of the shooting, but the defendant has testified that he was not.

Coady said he will ask that the murder charge be reduced to involuntary manslaughter because the shooting was reckless, not premeditated. If convicted, the teen-ager could be sentenced to a maximum of six years in prison on that charge. If the jury finds him guilty of murder, he could be sentenced to from 27 years to life in prison.