Youth Yelled ‘I Smoked Him,’ Witness Says

Joey Paul Bellinger, the 16-year-old accused of gunning down two deaf brothers in Granada Hills and killing one of them, yelled, “I smoked him, I smoked him,” as he and four friends sped away from the shooting, according to court records.

Search warrants filed by Los Angeles police during the investigation of the Jan. 28 shooting of Cesar Vieira, 30, and Edward Vieira, 25, of Palmdale contain statements from three teen-agers who were with Bellinger during the shooting, which occurred after a traffic confrontation.

The teen-agers said they had expected to fight with the Vieira brothers, although they knew Bellinger had a gun. They quoted Bellinger as defending the shooting afterward.

“Joey Bellinger kept saying, ‘I should have shot him in the head and killed him,’ ” a 17-year-old girl said in a statement to police. “Everybody started yelling at Joey that they were just supposed to fight. Joey said, ‘Why should we go home with bruises and blood all over us when I made it simple and easy?’ ”

Cesar Vieira, who was shot in the chest, died a day after the shooting. His brother, hit by bullets in the shoulder and hip, has recovered.

Bellinger, who was arrested two weeks ago after fleeing from his home in Long Beach to Upstate New York, denied the charges of murder and attempted murder at his arraignment Tuesday in Sylmar Juvenile Court.

The youth, wearing a gray sweat shirt and tan pants, said nothing during the brief hearing, at which he was joined by his parents, Joseph Paul Bellinger Sr. and Phyllis Goodman. The denial was entered by the boy’s attorney, Gerald L. Fogelman.

It was Joey Bellinger’s first court appearance in Los Angeles since his arrest March 2 at the home of a family acquaintance in Cassville, N.Y. The boy was returned to Los Angeles late Friday in the custody of detectives.

Juvenile Court Judge Morton Rochman scheduled a May 16 hearing to determine whether the boy should be tried as an adult. Prosecutors said such a trial is warranted because of the severity of the crime.

Fogelman said after the arraignment that his client should not be tried as an adult because he remains traumatized by the 1987 murder of his older sister, whose body was found stuffed in three plastic bags and dumped on a hillside in Los Angeles. The attorney said it would be unfair to prosecute the boy as an adult when his sister’s killer, a 15-year-old boy, was sentenced to juvenile custody.

“From what I can see, he’s a very scared young boy,” Fogelman said after the arraignment. “The daughter was brutally murdered. The family never recovered from that. . . .”

According to police and court records, the shooting arose out of a confrontation at a traffic light at Devonshire Street and Balboa Avenue after Bellinger and four other youths in a car exchanged stares and insults with the Vieira brothers, who were on a motorcycle.

A 16-year-old boy who was in the back seat of the car told police that Bellinger, who was also in the back seat, “threw up a gang sign--a ‘K’ for Kaos,” which stands for Kids Against Our Society, the name of a West Los Angeles gang. The 16-year-old witness said the men on the motorcycle returned insulting gestures and one spat on the car window. One of the teen-agers spat back and when the light turned green both vehicles pulled into a parking lot. The teen-agers said they were expecting a fight.

“All of the sudden, Joey Bellinger pulled a gun and shot once,” according to the 16-year-old witness’s statement to police. “The gun jammed and Joey reloaded it. . . . Joey started capping rounds at the Mexicans. . . .

“As we were driving away, Joey was saying, ‘I smoked him, I smoked him.’ ”

FBI agents arrested Joey Bellinger after receiving a telephone tip that he was staying at the Cassville home of Susan Alguire, who told a local newspaper that the boy’s mother asked her to take care of the boy until the rest of the family arrived. The mother did not say that her son was wanted in the slaying, Alguire said.

Investigators determined that the youth had fled to New York after obtaining a warrant for telephone records from the family’s Long Beach home and nearby pay phones, said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Allan Fork. The records showed that calls had been made to the Bellingers’ house from the Upstate New York communities of Clayton, Syracuse and Utica, Fork said.

According to court records, investigators followed the father after he met with Los Angeles police Feb. 5 and told them he would not disclose his son’s whereabouts unless prosecutors promised to try the youth as a juvenile. After the deal was rejected, Bellinger left the police station in Northridge and was followed by members of the Los Angeles police COBRA unit, which specializes in surveillance.

The father went home to Long Beach but left the house and made long-distance calls from two nearby pay phones, according to records. At one point, an undercover officer walked up to the phone next to the father and overheard him discussing details of the police meeting with a person presumed to be his son, records say.

The boy’s 40-year-old father was charged last week with aiding and abetting a felon. He was released after posting a $5,000 bond.