Date Describes O.C. Slaying on Prom Night

The teen-ager who was sleeping next to high school basketball star Berlyn Cosman when Cosman was fatally shot on prom night choked back tears in court Tuesday as he described seeing Paul M. Crowder, the man accused of shooting her, looming in the doorway with a gun in his hand.

Kenny Schaffer, who took Cosman to the Crescenta Valley High School prom, detailed the last moments of her life in an Anaheim hotel, where about two dozen teen-agers had been drinking and socializing all night after the dance.

In a related development, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans revealed in court--outside the presence of the jury--that Crowder is under investigation of carrying a weapon at another party and at a softball game, and of firing shots into a gay bar in West Hollywood. He would provide no further details but he said that evidence might be presented late in the case.

On the second day of Crowder’s murder trial in Orange County Superior Court, Schaffer, 17, told the jury that he was sleeping next to Cosman on a fold-out couch just before dawn on June 1 when the door opened, light streamed in and Javier Pimentel, a friend of Crowder’s, came into the room at the Crown-Sterling Suites Hotel.

A moment later, Crowder appeared in the doorway with a revolver, but Schaffer said he “didn’t think anything of it” because Crowder had been waving the weapon all night. Schaffer said he put his head back down on the mattress but seconds later, he heard a gunshot.

Panic ripped through the room. As Pimentel snapped on the light, Schaffer bolted upright in bed, saying, “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” Crowder, Pimentel and another boy, Joey Gobo, were all asking where the bullet went, he said.

“I looked down and I seen the blood coming from her,” Schaffer testified. “(I said) ‘She’s been shot, she’s been shot!’ . . . I had a towel on Berlyn’s head. I was yelling at her to breathe.”

Schaffer said he picked up the phone, screaming that Berlyn had been shot. He heard Crowder say to his friend, Javier, “We gotta go, Jav,” and then he ran from the room.

Crowder, 19, played football for Crescenta Valley High in Los Angeles County’s La Crescenta area, but dropped out of school. He allegedly killed Cosman because she and a friend, Jill Cappillero, had refused to let him party in the suite where they were trying to sleep.

Schaffer testified Tuesday that Cosman, Cappillero and Crowder had exchanged angry words about this earlier in the evening and that Crowder was “mad” when he returned to another of the hotel suites, and referred to Cappillero as a “bitch.”

Pimentel, 19, who came to the party with Crowder and also carried a gun, testified that Crowder was “a little angry” after talking to the girls but “forgot about it” and went back to playing cards in another suite.

Both Pimentel and Schaffer admitted on cross-examination that only Crowder and Cappillero--not Cosman--were part of the angry exchange.

Schaffer said the fight “wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Pimentel described a frightened Crowder moments after the gunshot.

“He turned white and started panicking,” Pimentel testified. “He said, ‘I gotta get outta here,’ and I said, ‘No, stay,’ and he ran out the door.”

Pimentel surprised prosecutors by saying something he had never said before: that he had stumbled as he entered Cosman’s room. That statement supports a cornerstone of the defense, which contends that Crowder tripped in the doorway, accidentally discharging the gun.

Evans, obviously angry, asked if Pimentel knew that was a key part of the defense. Pimentel denied it but later admitted he had overheard Crowder’s mother discussing it on the telephone.

Evans also attacked Pimentel’s credibility by forcing him to admit that he had lied to police right after the shooting, when he said he didn’t know who had run from the hotel room.

Both the defense and the prosecution have questioned the credibility of the teen-age witnesses because all have admitted they were drinking and most initially lied to the police about what happened.

Stella Vukojevich, 18, testified that she and about half a dozen of the youths made a pact right after the shooting to conceal details from the police.

“After it happened, we were sitting in the hotel room awhile,” she said. “We didn’t know what to do. We were confused and we wanted to stay out of it. We decided to say we were sleeping, we didn’t know what happened.”

Just before dawn, Vukojevich testified, she watched as Crowder walked around the main party room with the gun cocked, aimed at the ceiling. Minutes after he said his goodbys and left the room, they heard a gunshot, she said.

Loren Sugarman, a ballistics expert, testified Tuesday that the bullet found in Cosman’s bed’s frame was fired from Crowder’s gun.

The prosecution is expected to rest its case today and the defense will begin.