Drive-By Shooting Victim Testifies : Trial: Another of the witnesses to a Garden Grove attack is cross-examined about her motives in breaking the gang code of silence.

A victim of a gang shooting on La Bonita Avenue in Garden Grove last year testified Wednesday that she decided to break the gang code of silence and identify the assailants to police because one of those killed was her 4-year-old cousin.

“This was no longer gang against gang,” said Jenny Hernandez, 21. “It was them against the family.”

Two people were killed and six suffered bullet wounds in the Sept. 16, 1989, drive-by shooting a block north of Westminster Avenue. Police have called it the worst gang attack ever in the county.

Hernandez completed her second day of testimony Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court here at the murder trial of three young men who are accused of staging the attack as part of a long-standing war between rival gangs. Hernandez is scheduled to return today for more cross-examination by the defendants’ attorneys.

Hernandez, who was shot twice in the attack, admitted that she had misled police officers until the second day after the incident, but she denied that she had actually lied to them. She just had not told them all she knew, she said.

Although the defense attorneys tripped her up numerous times over inconsistencies in previous pretrial hearing testimony and in statements to police, they were unable to shake her identification of the accused as the attackers.

On trial are Louis P. Valadez, 28, Robert P. Figueroa, 20, and Roman G. Menchaca, 19. All are said to be members of the 5th Street gang in Santa Ana, which has had a feud of 10 years’ standing with the 17th Street gang, whose turf includes the block of La Bonita Avenue where the shootings occurred.

Hernandez testified that she recognized Menchaca and a juvenile--who is in custody and awaiting trial in connection with the case--as the people who fired guns from a pickup truck. She also identified Figueroa as the young man riding in the passenger seat of the truck.

She did not identify Valadez. But another victim at the scene, Irene Fernandez, is expected to testify today, and in previous police statements she has identified Valadez as the driver of the truck.

Frank Fernandez Jr., 4, was killed in the attack. He had been in the back seat of a car with his parents and a baby brother. Also killed was Miguel (Smokey) Navarro, 18, a member of the 17th Street gang.

In earlier testimony, Ralph Rodriguez, also a cousin of the dead boy, said he had urged his cousins Hernandez and Irene Fernandez to break the gang code of silence.

Rodriguez and Hernandez each gave different accounts of what is behind the code.

Rodriguez testified that it means you do not tell the police about such incidents because you want to retaliate for them yourself. Hernandez testified that it means you do not talk to the police because your assailants will track you down for “ratting” and hurt you.

Another witness, Rebecca Mercado, testified earlier this week that she recognized Menchaca as the shooter. But Hernandez and Fernandez are the only other people among numerous witnesses to the shooting who claim that they could identify anyone inside the truck.

The defense argues that Hernandez, Fernandez and Mercado together hatched their stories in order to blame the incident on the 5th Street gang, either at the urging of Rodriguez or of the 4-year-old’s father, Frank Fernandez.

When Hernandez denied that, Valadez attorney David A. Zimmerman set a trap for her.

She steadfastly denied that Fernandez had told her what to say when she eventually went to the police. Well, Zimmerman asked her, did she say anything to Fernandez about what had happened? No, she answered.

“You mean to tell us that you knew the men who did this and you did not even tell the father of that little boy?” Zimmerman asked in an incredulous tone.

Hernandez at first repeated her no, then stopped to think and finally said she could not remember whether she told him.

Zimmerman wondered aloud how she could be so sure that Fernandez did not tell her anything, yet she was now very unsure whether she might have told him.

That is a key issue to the defense attorneys, who contend that the women are lying. Even if they would not tell the police what happened, their reasoning goes, wouldn’t they have discussed it with other family members that night? Or the next day? Most who testified said they did not hear anything about 5th Street being behind the attack.

On cross-examination, a great majority of Hernandez’s answers to defense questions was “I can’t remember.” When the defense would read back to her verbatim previous statements she had made to police or in court at a preliminary hearing, she would simply repeat that she could not remember ever having said that but that she could have.

Figueroa attorney Julian Bailey pointed out to her that she had testified this week that she saw Figueroa on the passenger side of the truck before the shooting started. At the preliminary hearing, however, she said she had not seen him until after the shooting had started.