Newly Acquitted O.C. Man Arrested in Gang Slaying

A man described by police as one of the most dangerous gang members in the city has been arrested on suspicion of murder in one of three recent gang shootings--two months after he was acquitted in another murder case.

Eleazar Gonzales, 22, was taken into custody outside his parents’ Santa Ana home over the weekend and is being held on suspicion of slaying 17-year-old Roger Ochoa, who was shot four times in the back after what police described as an argument with the suspect at a neighborhood party on April 20.

Santa Ana Police Detective Thomas Serafin said Gonzales is “capable of extreme violence” because of a “hair-trigger temper.”

“I say he is in the Top 5 of those who are dangerous enough to kill,” said Serafin, an investigator on the department’s gang detail. Officials say there are more than 60 gangs in Santa Ana with more than 7,000 members.

But in a telephone interview Monday from the Orange County Jail, Gonzales said: “They’re wrong. . . . They’re trying to frame me again for something I didn’t do.”

Gonzales denied killing Ochoa and said police investigators are frustrated because in a previous murder case he was found not guilty--despite testimony from witnesses that he shot the victim in the head eight times. Gonzales said police have been harassing him ever since.

When officers interrogated him on Saturday, Gonzales said they told him: “ ‘You know what? We don’t know if you did it or not, but if you didn’t, give us some names.’ ” William Yacobbozi Jr., a court-appointed lawyer who represented Gonzales in the February trial, said Monday that the suspect has been attending a vocational technical school full time and is trying to make something of his life.

“The (district attorney’s) office and the police were not happy when he was acquitted,” Yacobbozi said. “I told Eleazar when he was acquitted to be extra careful, because if he even jaywalked he’d find himself in jail again. I’m not saying he was singled out, but that’s certainly a possibility in my mind.”

Lt. David Salazar, head of the Santa Ana gang detail, said Gonzales was arrested Saturday afternoon after witnesses identified him as the gunman who shot Ochoa.

“We don’t play games with crimes like this,” Salazar said in response to Yacobbozi. “We worked on this case carefully and minutely. We examined every detail.”

However, Salazar declined to respond to Gonzales’ claim that he was being framed.

Several witnesses told police that they saw Gonzales at the party that night with Ochoa, Salazar said. The shooting occurred, according to Salazar, after Ochoa got into an argument with the suspect, who then walked to a nearby car, returned with a gun and fired.

When investigators arrested Gonzales, Salazar said, they also confiscated several items inside his parents’ residence that corroborate statements from witnesses who identified him as the gunman.

The killing came in a weekend of gang violence that saw three separate shootings. Two teen-agers died in the violence and another was seriously wounded, along with an 8-year-old boy. As a result, Santa Ana police launched a series of neighborhood sweeps last weekend to prevent further incidents.

Thirty-five people were arrested in the crackdown Friday through Sunday, mostly for minor violations such as trespassing, and another 150 were issued traffic citations. Almost all of the suspects were released after being cited. Salazar said more sweeps will be conducted this weekend.

“The gangs knew we were out there; they weren’t going to try anything while the police was around,” Salazar said.

Gang experts in the county praised the effort, saying it sends a signal to gang members.

“The residents are tired of the gangs and want them out of the neighborhoods,” said Tony Borbon, director of a gang-prevention program known as Turning Point. “It’s a good step for the police to show their force.”

Gonzales contends that on the night of Ochoa’s death, he was driving around with friends, “cruising around and drinking beer. We were partying with girls” at the time that Ochoa was killed.

Gonzales acknowledges having once been a member of the Highland Street gang but said he quit in 1985, when his daughter was born. He concedes that he has been charged with selling the drug PCP and that he pleaded guilty to an assault charge in 1986.

But since he was acquitted in the previous murder case, he said, he has tried to learn a trade. Police, he said, have made life difficult for him by stopping him when he goes out of his house.

“They think a person doesn’t change his ways,” Gonzales said. “A person, when he gets older, he gets wiser and changes his ways. It’s hard to get away from this unless you move away. The cops are always going to harass you.”

Ochoa’s mother, meanwhile, said she was happy that a suspect has been arrested in connection with her son’s death.

“I feel a lot of sadness because I see he is young, and some of these young people are wasting their young lives,” said Christina Martinez de Ochoa. “In my heart, I have forgiven him, and may God be his judge. My son is not going to come back. I have to go forward with life.

“If he (Gonzales) is guilty, I feel for his family, who now are living with the shame of having their son arrested. . . . I don’t know him or his family, but what they are going through is similar to what I am going through.”

Gonzales was arrested in 1988 in connection with the shooting death of Highland Street gang member Juan Picon, 21, who was shot eight times in the head and once in the chest in an alley near McFadden Avenue and Highland Street.

A month and a half later, Gonzales joined three other inmates who escaped from the Orange County Jail by cutting a hole in a security fence and lowering themselves with a sheet.

On the advice of his family, however, he turned himself in four days later.

When he was finally tried in that case, a jury found Gonzales not guilty, despite the testimony of two eyewitnesses, one of them a gang member.

At the trial, Yacobbozi employed an unusual strategy: He called experts to testify that it was a serious breach of the gang code to kill a member of one’s own gang.

Yacobbozi told jurors that Santa Ana had thousands of gang members, and that for some young people, “it’s the only way of life they know.”

Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef, who prosecuted Gonzales, said the jury apparently did not believe testimony from another gang member who claimed to have witnessed the shooting.

“I never thought in my mind how they (jurors) could find him not guilty,” Avdeef said. “To me, it was evident, he (Gonzales) was the killer.”