Slaying Suspect’s Father Skips Police Meeting : Crime: Arresting the father of a youth sought in the shooting of two deaf brothers won’t help, officials say.

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 slaying in Granada Hills of Cesar Vieira, 30, and the wounding of his brother Edward, 25, both of Palmdale.

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

Police said they will not arrest the elder Bellinger on suspicion of 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.”

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 said she witnessed the shooting of the two deaf brothers. The girl’s version of the story, which depicts Joey as shooting the brothers 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 that 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 who were in the car, but “no one in the car understands 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.

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, driving the streets of Silver Lake and sitting on hillsides with binoculars, he said, searching for a car that a friend of Michelle’s had said might have been involved. Even after a 15-year-old boy was arrested and convicted in the killing, Bellinger continued his search for others he believed were implicated in his daughter’s death.

Joey, disturbed by his sister’s murder, dropped out of high school with his father’s permission, Bellinger said. “I lost faith in the school system,” Bellinger said.

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

Houston Touceda, an attorney for the owner of an apartment building in the 400 block of Orange Grove Avenue, said he was hired to evict the family after neighbors claimed Joey was dealing drugs from the apartment. Touceda recounted a series of violent incidents, including a drive-by shooting that blew out a glass window of the Bellingers’ apartment and a firebombing that scorched the lawn.

“They claimed Joey was a good little boy then, that everyone else was bad, and that all the kid did was play video games,” Touceda said. “But I’ve been involved in thousands of eviction cases before and I’ve never seen a whole neighborhood up in arms like this one was.”

Residents were so incensed that they formed a citizens group called CANE, for Citizens Against Neighborhood Erosion, and approached Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky to assist them, a spokeswoman for the councilman confirmed Monday.

Neighbors alleged that Joey is the head of a gang called KAOS--an acronym borrowed from the television series “Get Smart”-- which they said stands 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 gang was primarily known for defacing the Fairfax district with graffiti.

One Fairfax resident who asked not to be identified said that rival gang members made several attacks on the Bellinger residence last summer. “There were two gangs trying to kill Joey,” she said. “That’s when Joey started carrying a gun.”