Father of Fugitive Boy Seeks Guarantee

The father of a 16-year-old boy suspected of shooting two deaf brothers refused to meet with Los Angeles police Monday to discuss turning in his son.

Joey Bellinger remained in hiding Monday evening after his father failed to show up for a scheduled interview at the Devonshire police station to discuss the Jan. 28 murder of Cesar Vieira, 30, and the wounding of his brother Edward, 25, in Granada Hills.

The fugitive’s father, Joe Bellinger, 40, has said he is in contact with the boy, but that he will not turn him in until authorities promise to try him as a juvenile. Police have refused to make such an agreement.

“This is my son’s life,” Bellinger said. “I’m doing everything I can to see that the truth is brought out.”

Police said they will not arrest Joe Bellinger for harboring or aiding a suspected felon, although they believe they have grounds to do so. “That would only push him underground,” said Detective Michael Brandt. “The point is to get the kid surrendered before he hurts anyone else.”

The elder Bellinger has gone to extraordinary lengths to defend his son, including embarking on a five-day hunger strike and arranging media interviews at his Long Beach home Sunday with a 17-year-old girl, who told reporters she witnessed the shooting of the two deaf brothers. The girl’s version of the story, which depicts Joey as firing on the two men in self-defense, differs from that of the surviving brother, who told police the youth fired without provocation after forcing the brothers’ motorcycle off the road.

Police have declined comment on the girl’s story but confirmed they have interviewed her.

Monday, Bellinger produced for reporters a 15-year-old boy who said he also was in the car with Joey and witnessed the shooting. The boy, who said he understands sign language, claimed Joey acted in self-defense, and that the deaf brothers were belligerent and made no attempt to communicate before the shooting.

Brandt said police have interviewed the youths in the car, but “no one in the car understands American sign language. The father is just trying to cover his son’s trail, that’s all.”

The boy later told The Times that, although he was interviewed by police, they did not ask him whether he knows sign language.

This is the second time the Bellinger family has appeared in the news. Three years ago, the body of Joey’s older sister, Michelle, 16, was found stuffed into three plastic bags on a hillside in the Silver Lake district, her hands, chest and ankles bound with duct tape. The elder Bellinger dogged the investigation. He drove the streets of Silver Lake and sat on hillsides with binoculars, searching for a car that a friend of Michelle said might have been involved. Even after a 15-year-old boy was arrested and convicted in the killing, Bellinger continued his search for what he believed were others implicated in his daughter’s death.

Residents in the Fairfax district neighborhood, where the Bellinger family lived at the time, say Joey’s behavior changed for the worse after his sister’s death. He dropped out of high school with his father’s permission and became known in the neighborhood as a troublemaker.

A spokesman for the family’s former landlord said Joey’s behavior caused the family’s eviction from their Fairfax apartment late last year.

Neighbors said Joey is the head of a youth gang dubbed KAOS, an acronym borrowed from the television series “Get Smart,” which for the gang stood for Kids Against Our Society.

Detective Joe Lumbreras of the West Bureau’s anti-gang unit said Monday that KAOS was known to police as a “wanna-be gang of white youths who probably used narcotics and believed in racial segregation.” Lumbreras said the group of youths was primarily known for defacing the Fairfax district with graffiti.