Judge to Hear Police Tapes of Bellinger’s Companions : Murder case: The court will use the taped interviews to assess whether the witnesses have changed their accounts of the shooting.

A Pasadena Juvenile Court judge will listen to taped police interviews of three teen-agers who witnessed Joey Paul Bellinger shoot two deaf brothers in a Granada Hills parking lot to determine whether the witnesses have changed their accounts of the shooting.

Judge Sandy R. Kriegler, who must decide whether Bellinger should be tried in Juvenile Court or as an adult, said Tuesday that he will review tapes of the original police interviews with three friends of Bellinger’s.

Bellinger is charged with murder and attempted murder for fatally shooting Cesar Vieira, 30, and wounding Edward Vieira, 25, both of Palmdale, during a confrontation between the brothers and a group of Bellinger’s friends on Jan. 28.

During the fitness hearing that began Monday, three of Bellinger’s friends who witnessed the shooting, after a traffic argument, said Bellinger fired in self-defense, as the brothers charged toward him.

Before he fired, the teen-agers said, Bellinger screamed at the brothers to get back and fired a warning shot into the air. They also said another teen-ager--who has been missing since the incident--screamed at Bellinger to shoot the brothers.

These accounts differ from earlier accounts released by police, which suggested that Bellinger fired without provocation or encouragement.

Kriegler decided to listen to the tapes to assess the credibility of the witnesses. Prosecutors suggested that the teen-agers may have changed their stories to protect their friend, but defense attorney Gerald L. Fogelman and the witnesses themselves said they may have left out some details in talking to police because they were nervous.

One teen-age witness, Inna Spivak, testified Tuesday that when police interviewed her, they cut her off and seemed uninterested in the context of the shooting.

“They didn’t care about what happened,” she said. “They released a lot of lies in the paper.”

The events preceding the shooting are critical to determining whether Bellinger will be tried as an adult or as a child because one of the factors the judge must consider is the gravity of the offense.

If Bellinger fired in self-defense, that could be viewed as a mitigating factor, lessening the seriousness of the crime and improving his chances to be tried as a juvenile, which would limit the maximum sentence to nine years in custody of the California Youth Authority. Prosecutors want to try Bellinger as an adult, which would expose him to a possible sentence of 25 years to life.