L.A. Gang Member Acquitted by Jury in Santa Ana Slayings

A Los Angeles gang member who was implicated in a double slaying in the streets of Santa Ana more than 4 years ago was found not guilty of murder on Thursday.

A Superior Court jury in Santa Ana, after deliberating almost a week, acquitted Frank W. Halstead, 22, of Echo Park of all the charges against him--murder, attempted murder and conspiracy. He could have faced a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.

‘Look at the Evidence’

“I am so happy!” Halstead shouted in a telephone interview after the verdict.

“I’m just glad that the jury was willing to look at the evidence and not let the fact that gangs were involved taint them into distorting the facts,” he said.

Halstead, the driver of a car filled with Los Angeles Diamond Street gang members one night in September, 1984, was accused of pulling out a handgun and giving it to a passenger during a confrontation with a group of Santa Ana gang members in the 2000 block of West 5th Street in Santa Ana. The passenger was convicted in an earlier trial.

Shot and killed that night were Frank Villa, 21, and Anthony Silerio, 18.

There was some dispute at Halstead’s trial over whether the defendant was in fact reaching for a gun in the car and whether he acted in self-defense.

Also in conlict was testimony over who among the gang members on the street that night initiated the confrontation.

Orange County prosecutors maintained that the Los Angeles gang members provoked the confrontation by cruising down the streets of Santa Ana shouting “Diamond heads!’--their gang affiliation--and verbally harassing Santa Ana gang members.

But Halstead maintained that he and his friends were just in Santa Ana to have a good time. In Los Angeles, they had met several girls from Santa Ana who invited the young men to return with them that night for a party, he said.

Once in Santa Ana, Halstead maintained, the young men were confronted by members of Santa Ana’s F Troop gang in a gray station wagon that blocked their way.

Halstead said in the interview that the Diamond Head gang members from Los Angeles had no dispute with Santa Ana’s F Troopers. “We never even heard of them before that night.”

He refused to discuss details of the confrontation but said: “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was innocent.” The interview was cut short when Halstead’s family members objected to his speaking with the press.

Neither Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton nor defense attorney Arthur Goldberg of Los Angeles was available late Thursday to comment on the case. The jury returned its verdict late in the afternoon in the courtroom of Judge John J. Ryan.