El Rio Gang Member, 15, Is Convicted of Murder : Cabrillo Village: The boy rode along on a drive-by shooting spree in which two bystanders were killed. He will be sentenced Aug. 9.

As his parents sat behind him, and as the father of one of the victims watched with approval, a 15-year-old El Rio boy was found guilty of murder Wednesday in the drive-by shooting of two Saticoy men.

After a seven-day non-jury trial, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Allan L. Steele ruled that Joseph Scholle was guilty of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy in the April 7 deaths of Javier Ramirez, 18, and Rolando Martinez, 20, and the wounding of two other men.

Scholle was the first of four teen-age suspects to be tried in the case. Two others are scheduled to be tried next month. The fourth pleaded guilty last week and is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

But unlike the other defendants, who are 16 or older and were ordered to stand trial as adults, Scholle was 15 and remained in the juvenile system. As a result, he cannot be held in custody past his 25th birthday, while the others could be sentenced to life in prison. Steele scheduled Scholle’s sentencing for Aug. 9. The youth’s divorced parents, who attended every day of the trial, were in the front row of spectators when the verdict was announced. Neither they nor their son showed any reaction, and the parents declined to comment afterward.

Scholle’s attorney, Richard W. Hanawalt, said he was not surprised by the judge’s finding because of public outrage about the drive-by shooting. Had Steele done otherwise, the attorney said, “the heat he would get would be extremely uncomfortable.”

Hanawalt said he expects to fare better when he takes the case to the 2nd District Court of Appeal. He said the evidence against Scholle is insufficient to support a guilty verdict.

According to trial testimony, the four boys were partying with some girls in a Ventura lemon orchard the night of the shooting. While Scholle and one of the girls were necking in a car, the other youths--Carlos Vargas, Vincent Medrano and Edward (Tony) Throop--discussed driving through the Cabrillo Village neighborhood, witnesses said.

Medrano was upset because Cabrillo Village gang members had picked on him at school, witnesses testified. Vargas, who has pleaded guilty, testified that Throop volunteered to fire some shots in the neighborhood with a rifle that Vargas and Medrano had purchased that day.

Several witnesses testified that when Scholle quit necking and rejoined the group, he was eager to go along.

In his closing argument, Hanawalt conceded that Scholle was riding in the car when Throop fired the fatal bullets. But the attorney insisted that Scholle did not know that Throop had a gun or that a shooting was planned.

“Joe was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Hanawalt said, adding that Scholle had no grudge against Cabrillo Village gang members.

The attorney acknowledged that Scholle was gleeful about the shooting afterward. But he likened Scholle’s role to that of Los Angeles police officers who stood by during the notorious beating of Rodney King. Only the four officers who were videotaped while beating King have been charged, Hanawalt said, although the others watched the attack approvingly.

“Mirth and laughter after a crime does not equal guilt,” he said. “There has to be an action.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris said that there was overwhelming evidence of a conspiracy and that Scholle was a willing participant. He cited Scholle’s taped interview with investigators immediately after the shooting.

In the tape, which was played in court Wednesday, Scholle at first denied being with the other defendants that night. Then he said he was there but didn’t see a gun. Then he said he saw the gun barrel hanging out the back window. At one point on the tape, Scholle said he did not know who fired the shots. Then he said it was Throop.

Kossoris called Scholle’s statement “an endless series of lies and changes of story” and “strong proof of his consciousness of guilt.”

As for motive, the prosecutor said, Scholle is a member of an El Rio gang, and taking part in a drive-by shooting would be “a real feather in his cap.”

Although the shooting was aimed at a Cabrillo Village gang, according to trial testimony, the slain men were not gang members, investigators said. They were standing in a front yard while attending a baptism party.

Claudio Ramirez, whose firstborn child was killed in the attack, was in court Wednesday when the verdict was announced. Afterward, Ramirez said in Spanish that he and his family are “pleased with the way justice has been done.”