Gang Member Acquitted of Cohort’s Murder : Justice: Defendant says killing would have violated gang code.

A Santa Ana gang member who escaped from Orange County Jail in 1988 while awaiting trial on charges of murdering a fellow gang member was found not guilty Tuesday of that killing.

Eleazor Gonzales, 21, testified at his Harbor Court trial that it was a strict violation of the gang code to shoot a member of a person’s own gang. In fact, he testified, he had escaped from jail while awaiting trial in order to prove his innocence.

Gonzales was charged with the July 25, 1988, murder of Juan Picon, 21, a fellow member of the Highland Street gang, in an alley near McFadden Avenue and Highland Street. Picon was shot eight times in the head and once in the chest.

Gonzales fled to Mexico after the shooting but eventually surrendered. He said he fled only because he heard that Picon’s family was after him.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef had two eyewitnesses to the shooting.

One was a Highland Street gang member who told police that they were “on the right track” in suspecting Gonzales as the shooter. The second was a young acquaintance who was not in the gang. He identified Gonzales as the shooter and told jurors that Gonzales had threatened him through another gang member to keep him from testifying.

“I like him, but this is a rough kid,” William Yacobozzi Jr. said later about his client. “He’s been in gangs since he was 13; it’s the only family he has ever known.”

Yacobozzi had a two-pronged defense. He put on witnesses who testified that it was a serious breach of the gang code to kill a member of a person’s own gang. The punishment is the death of the person’s family, they testified. Yacobozzi also presented evidence that the Highland Street gang had a serious rivalry with another neighborhood gang, trying to convince jurors that Picon may have been the victim of a gang war.

Several jurors told Yacobozzi later that they were not convinced that Gonzales was innocent but that it remained a question who the shooter was.

Yacobozzi said the trial was an eye-opener for people unfamiliar with gang life.

“There are 7,000 gang members in Santa Ana and 65 gangs,” Yacobozzi said. “For some of these young people, it’s the only way of life they know.”

Gonzales told jurors that after he escaped, he gave himself up once he learned “from the street” that his gang acquaintances knew he was innocent.