Fugitive in Shooting of 2 Deaf Men Held in N.Y.

Joey Paul Bellinger--the fugitive 16-year-old Long Beach youth charged last month with killing one deaf man and attempting to kill a second in a roadside confrontation in Granada Hills--was arrested in central New York, authorities said Saturday.

Bellinger--who was described by police as an associate of a West Los Angeles-based skinhead gang--was arraigned and held without bail Saturday at the Oneida County Correctional Facility in Oriskany, N.Y., said Sgt. Phil Brockway of the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department.

Los Angeles Police Department Detective Mitch Robins, who worked on the case with New York investigators, was en route to New York on Saturday to participate in extradition proceedings against Bellinger, which are scheduled for early this week, officials said.

Bellinger was taken into custody without incident at an acquaintance’s house around 11:50 p.m. Friday in Cassville, a village in the town of Paris, Brockway said. He was arrested by FBI agents working out of the Utica office, he said.

The teen had been sought as the alleged gunman in the Jan. 28 shooting of two brothers, Cesar and Edward Vieira, both of Palmdale. Cesar Vieira, 30, died the following day of chest wounds. Edward Vieira, 25, is still recovering from wounds to his hip and shoulder, police said.

Bellinger was riding in a car with four friends when they pulled up next to the Vieira brothers, who were on a motorcycle at the intersection of Devonshire Street and Balboa Boulevard, police said. After a “stare-down contest” between the occupants of the car and the two brothers, the vehicles pulled into a nearby parking lot.

The brothers--who had limited speaking skills and usually communicated through sign language--were apparently unable to understand what was happening, police said.

The Vieira brothers’ mother, Bernice Cree, said Saturday from her home in Reseda that she was relieved with Bellinger’s arrest.

“Thank God he’s been caught,” Cree said. “I hope he is punished as a man, and not as a juvenile. Now I can go to bed and sleep, because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since this happened.”

Police charged Bellinger with the shooting after two teen-agers who were riding in the car talked to authorities. Those teens were not charged in the case.

At first, investigators thought that Bellinger had been staying with friends in the Hollywood-Fairfax area. He had left his Long Beach home about seven months earlier, they said.

A federal warrant for his arrest was issued Feb. 12 after FBI authorities determined that Bellinger had friends and relatives living in Utica, and had apparently traveled there, an FBI spokesman said. The warrant charged Bellinger with unlawful interstate flight to escape prosecution, the spokesman said.

Brockway said a tip provided to the FBI led to Bellinger’s whereabouts.

Bellinger was living with Susan Alguire, who said in an interview with the Utica Observer-Dispatch that she provided the youth with room and board at the request of his mother, a high school friend. “She didn’t say, ‘I want you to hide my son,’ ” Alguire said. “I’m in shock.”

Alguire said that Bellinger’s mother, Phyllis Bellinger, said that she and her husband were planning to move back to New York to live.

Phyllis Bellinger could not be reached for comment.

Bellinger was brought before U.S. District Magistrate Gustave J. DiBianco on Saturday. At the hearing, an assistant U.S. attorney asked the court to turn Bellinger over to the Oneida Sheriff’s Department.

He was then taken before New Hartford Justice James Van Slyke and was charged with being a fugitive from justice, Brockway said, and then sent to the County Jail.

During the court proceedings, Bellinger “did say he desires to return to California,” Brockway said.