Throop Testifies He Aimed Shots That Killed 2 Men at Shrubbery

Testifying at his murder trial Wednesday, Edward (Tony) Throop said he was aiming at shrubbery when he shot and killed two Saticoy men and wounded two others in a drive-by shooting last April.

“I was shooting into the bushes,” Throop said. “I wasn’t aiming it at them. . . . It was just a dark spot that I shot into.”

The Ventura youth said he was so drunk that night that he has forgotten much of what happened. “It’s like a dream,” he said.

But he did recall riding to the Cabrillo Village neighborhood, firing toward a crowd at the end of a cul-de-sac and, the next day, gradually realizing that he had killed two people.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

In the end, Throop said, he tried to establish an alibi by asking his mother and some of his friends to lie to police for him.

Throop, who turned 18 in July, is the oldest of four teen-agers charged in the April 7 slayings and the first to testify on his own behalf. After a day and a half on the witness stand, Throop completed his testimony Wednesday and the defense rested.

Deputy Public Defender Christina Briles has conceded that Throop fired the shots that killed Javier Ramirez, 18, and Rolando Martinez, 20, and wounded the others. But she maintains that the slayings were not premeditated and that Throop is guilty of no more than second-degree murder.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris insists that Throop shot the men deliberately because he had a grudge against a Cabrillo Village gang and wanted to enhance his own prestige with a Ventura Avenue gang.

Throop denied that he was a gang member, but he said the Cabrillo Village gang had harassed him and he wanted them to leave him alone. “I thought if I shot at them, they would be scared,” he said, wiping tears from his cheek.

Throop said he had no plan to shoot anyone. “I never hurt anybody in my life,” he said.

As they cruised Cabrillo Village shortly after midnight, “somebody handed me the gun,” Throop said. They drove to an intersection where someone squealed: “ ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ ” Throop said. There were some people standing at the end of the cul-de-sac who were dressed like gang members, he said.

From the back seat of the red Firebird he fired several shots with the .22-caliber rifle, not intending to hit anyone, he said. He didn’t remember how many shots he fired or where they went. Some of them hit the pavement, he said, because he almost dropped the gun after an expended shell burned his knee.

He said he didn’t remember much of what happened after they sped off. He got home about 5 a.m., he said, and went to sleep.

About noon that day, a friend called and said he had heard about a shooting in Cabrillo Village. “I was really worried,” Throop said. “I looked in the paper, but there wasn’t anything.”

He took the bus to Ventura Avenue and heard more about the shooting from friends there. When he told people he might be involved, “I think they were all proud of me or something. . . . They talked about it like it was a big joke, like it was funny or something.”

But he was worried, Throop said. That night he visited a friend, asking the friend and his parents if they would say he had been with them the night of the shooting.

When he was arrested three days after the shooting, Throop said, he thought the friends were going to help and he wanted his mother to back up their story. When she refused, he became angry, he said.

“She was not going to help me,” said Throop, whose mother has attended every day of the trial. “She always wants to do what’s right. That’s OK, but I was so scared.”

The jury in Ventura County Superior Court Judge Allan L. Steele’s courtroom is expected to begin deliberations today or Monday.

Throop and Vincent Medrano, who goes on trial in the case on Monday, suffered a defeat Wednesday when the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura refused a request by Medrano’s attorney, James Matthew Farley.

Both Farley and the county public defender’s office hoped that the higher court would order a special-circumstance allegation that aggravates the murder charge thrown out. The special allegation, that more than one person was killed in the crime, could result in a life sentence without possibility of parole.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin G. DeNoce said the appeal court notified him late Wednesday that it would not decide the issue now. DeNoce said the defense could still raise the issue after conviction and sentencing.