VENTURA : Youth Goes on Trial in Saticoy Killings

A 16-year-old boy went on trial on murder charges Thursday in connection with a drive-by shooting last spring in which two Saticoy men were killed and two other men wounded.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Saundra T. Brewer said in her opening statement in Ventura County Superior Court that Vincent Medrano is being tried as an adultfor helping convicted triggerman Edward (Tony) Throop and two other teen-agers plan the April 7 shooting in Cabrillo Village.

Throop was convicted Wednesday of two counts each of murder and attempted murder and one count of conspiracy for firing the shots that killed Rolando Martinez, 20, and Javier Ramirez, 18, as they stood outside a friend’s baptism party.

Brewer said Medrano helped plan the shooting and chipped in $25 for a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle that he and Carlos Vargas, 16, bought from an Oxnard man. She also said Medrano imitated something he saw in a movie, carving crosses into the bullets’ points to make them explode on impact.

She said the four teen-agers intended to shoot at Cabrillo Village gang members who hung out at a basketball court, but shot instead at the baptism party when they found the court was empty.

However, James M. Farley, Medrano’s court-appointed attorney, told jurors that Throop fired the weapon, which Medrano had helped buy only for hunting purposes. Medrano is not a gang member, although some of his friends were, Farley said.

“The question becomes for you to decide exactly what the degree of his involvement was,” Farley told jurors.

Testimony began late Thursday morning with Ilmer Maradiaga and Rudy Gutierrez, the two men who were wounded in the shooting.

Maradiaga showed jurors the scar on his cheek where the bullet penetrated his face and exited behind his left ear, and pointed to another wound in his shoulder. Gutierrez told jurors that another bullet struck him in the right shoulder and remains in his body, having worked its way over to his left shoulder.

Medrano faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is convicted on all charges, which include two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree attempted murder and one count of conspiracy.

Vargas, who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the others, faces sentencing Dec. 6. Joseph Scholle, 15, was convicted and sentenced in juvenile court to the California Youth Authority, where he can be imprisoned until his 25th birthday.