Trial Set for Man in Attack on Escapee Who Failed to Pay for Getaway Ride

On May 14, a North Hollywood man scaled two 12-foot-high barbed-wire fences and escaped from a minimum-security San Bernardino County jail where he was serving a one-year sentence for possession of cocaine.

He would have been better off staying put.

Jerome Prince’s taste of freedom ended less than 24 hours later when he collapsed at the front door of the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Station. He had been shot twice by a member of the notorious Crips gang after unwittingly recruiting a carload of gang members to drive him from San Bernardino to the San Fernando Valley, authorities said.

Johnny Ray Johnson, 25, who police say is a member of the Hoover Street Crips, was ordered Monday to stand trial in San Fernando Municipal Court on charges that he attempted to murder Prince, 32, after the fugitive failed to pay for the ride.

During the preliminary hearing, Prince--who has served time in state prison for robbery, arson and burglary--said he escaped from San Bernardino’s Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center and wanted to get to his home in North Hollywood.

Prince said he approached Johnson, who was standing in front of his parents’ house, and asked him for a ride, explaining his plight. The defendant agreed to help in exchange for money, Prince testified.

Johnson found another member of the Hoover Street Crips with a car and the men agreed to make the trip from San Bernardino, Prince testified. Two other men, who police believe were also Crips, accompanied them.

Prince said he realized his benefactors were gang members during the ride, which lasted more than an hour. Fearing trouble when they learned he had no money, Prince testified, he asked the men to drop him off at an apartment building across the street from the North Hollywood Police Station. He said he told them he had a friend who would give him money.

“I told ‘em I’d get them some money for the ride and they wanted to accompany me,” Prince said.

Prince said that when he told Johnson he did not want Johnson to follow him to his friend’s apartment, Johnson became angry and fired a .38-caliber revolver at the ground. The two began struggling and Johnson shot him in the stomach, Prince said.

As he lay on the ground, Prince testified, Johnson fired the revolver at his head but Prince threw his hands up and the bullet pierced his forearm. His assailants fled.

Prince testified that he was afraid he would bleed to death or that the gang members would return and kill him, so he fled back to the arms of the law--the nearby police station--where he collapsed.

He remained conscious long enough to describe the car, which authorities traced to Johnson, and David Engleton, 21, of San Bernardino. A preliminary hearing for Engleton will be held today in San Fernando Municipal Court. Authorities said a third suspect, Keith Slaughter, 21, is still at large.

Prince, after recovering from the two wounds, pleaded guilty to leaving a correctional facility without permission, a felony, and was sentenced to three years in state prison.