Attempted-Murder Count Dropped in ’83 Shooting : Crime: Suspect was wounded in disputed exchange with Fountain Valley police officer. He still awaits trial on other felony counts stemming from the fight.

Once portrayed on national television as one of the country’s most dangerous fugitives, Michael Wayde Mohon won a major court victory this week when prosecutors dropped charges that he tried to kill a Fountain Valley police officer in late 1983.

Mohon, now 45, whose dramatic exploits were featured on “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries,” fled from Sheriff’s Department custody in 1985, while awaiting trial on charges of burglary and attacking Kevin Arnold, a young reserve officer.

He was finally apprehended in 1989 in Alabama after the two crime shows aired details of the national manhunt.

“The reason I escaped was because these charges were on me,” Mohon told The Times in a telephone interview Wednesday from Orange County Jail. “All of this would have been unnecessary if they had not bum-beefed me on this. I wanted to go to trial because I would have been acquitted. Now, they are dropping the charges and trying to sweep it under the carpet.”

Tuesday morning, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald L. Cafferty asked Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey to dismiss charges of attempted murder and assault on a police officer. After a brief discussion with both sides in his chambers, Dickey granted the prosecution’s request.

Still intact are an original burglary count and felony charges of escape, false imprisonment, robbery and assault on a sheriff’s deputy that stemmed from his Jan. 17, 1985, flight from custody. Mohon allegedly overpowered a deputy while on his way to a physical therapy session at UCI Medical Center in Orange, then fled across the country, first posing as a painting contractor, then a beach bum in Florida before he was captured.

A pretrial hearing is scheduled July 12. If convicted on all counts, Mohon, who has a lengthy criminal record, could face up to 28 years in prison. He has been in Orange County Jail since his return from Alabama on July 8, 1989.

Cafferty was not at work Wednesday and unavailable for comment about the specific reasons for seeking the dismissals.

Judge Dickey and Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Maurice L. Evans, second in command at the district attorney’s office, said it would not be proper to discuss a pending case.

Fountain Valley Police Chief Elvin Miali said the district attorney’s office has told his department that there are “conflicting arguments” about the charges.

He would not elaborate and referred further inquiries to Cafferty.

“Even if those charges were dropped, I am confident Mohon will be put away for a long time,” Miali said. “For whatever reason, there are circumstances only the D.A. knows about. We try to file the best case possible.”

William D. Gallagher, Mohon’s defense attorney, said the attempted-murder and assault charges against Mohon were groundless, the result of an encounter with a police officer who has been in three other shootings in the years since.

He contended that his client has been unfairly branded by national TV coverage and a police training film in which Officer Arnold re-enacts his version of the shooting. The instructional tape has been used statewide at police academies.

“This man has been vilified nationwide,” Gallagher said. “His reputation runs coast to coast, and it sure makes it rough on the guy who isn’t good for it. I have had officers come up to me and say, ‘Aren’t you representing the person in the tape?’ ”

Gallagher said Cafferty indicated that he did not have enough evidence to proceed with the assault and attempted-murder charges.

He added that the prosecutor was very circumspect about his reasons and put the bare minimum on the record.

Gallagher said, however, that there are many contradictions between the statements of Arnold and other officers about what happened during Mohon’s arrest on Dec. 31, 1983.

That day, Arnold was investigating the attempted burglary of an apartment on La Colonia Avenue in Fountain Valley. After a foot chase, a struggle started, in which Mohon was shot six times and Arnold suffered a flesh wound on one ear. Mohon spent 41 days in the hospital recovering from wounds in the chest, buttocks, arm, shin and finger.

Arnold has claimed that Mohon was standing over him trying to take away his service revolver when he drew a backup weapon and fired five rounds in less than 3 seconds into the center of Mohon’s body.

Statements by Huntington Beach police officers, however, suggest that Mohon was not standing over Arnold at all and that he was shot repeatedly from some distance away while lying on the ground nursing a wounded finger.

Their statements further dispute whether Arnold fired the shots as fast as he said he did.

In the Wednesday interview, Mohon said Arnold provoked the fight by striking him twice in the back of the head with a pistol as he was bent over at the waist trying to catch his breath. Mohon said he then turned around, and Arnold struck him again in the forehead.

Fearing for his life, Mohon said, he grabbed Arnold’s gun with both hands to keep from getting hit again. He recalled that they wrestled with the weapon until a shot took a chunk out of his little finger. Then, he said, Arnold drew a smaller revolver and shot him five more times.

“I did not do anything to get shot,” Mohon said. “I was not armed, and he hit me hard. It was self-defense. There was no evidence, period, of me starting the fight with the officer. This thing has been blown all out of proportion.”

In the aftermath, the district attorney’s office, which investigators all officer-involved shootings in the county, concluded that there was no evidence to support criminal charges against the officer.

“Arnold acted properly throughout this whole thing,” Fountain Valley Chief Miali said. “I believe that so strongly that I gave him a Medal of Valor last year. Our feeling is that it was a good shooting, and he acted within our policy.”

Although it was seven years after the incident, Miali said that he bestowed the department’s highest honor on Arnold because the officer deserved it and that he “felt something should have been done sooner.”

Arnold could not be reached for comment.

Gallagher said Wednesday that there remain many unanswered questions about the truth of Arnold’s statements and whether the officer was using department-approved ammunition and had authorization to have a backup weapon.

Before the charges were dismissed Tuesday, Gallagher said, he had discussed with Cafferty other shootings involving Arnold, including one that resulted in the death of Cameron C. Rogers, 27, of San Dimas. Rogers was shot 10 times last year after his car crashed during a highway chase. A wrongful-death lawsuit is pending against Fountain Valley police.

Gallagher said he asked the court to grant him access to Arnold’s personnel records to see whether the officer violated department policy during those shootings and other incidents. So far, the court has not ruled on releasing the files.

Gallagher said he does not know whether his request had an impact on the decision to dismiss the charges.

“They don’t want to put that officer on the stand,” Mohon said. “The D.A. does not want to have to try to justify his actions. I didn’t want the charges dropped. I wanted to go to trial and get an acquittal.”

Mohon demanded Wednesday that the training tape in which Arnold is used as an actor in a re-creation of the incident be “taken off the shelf” and not distributed to police academies anymore.

“They made a hero out of this guy,” Mohon said, “and he isn’t.”