D.A. Charges Friends of Boy Slain in Fight : Prosecution: The three are accused of assault. Officials say the man who stabbed the youth acted in self-defense.

Three juveniles were charged with assault Tuesday for allegedly starting a fight that resulted in the stabbing death of their 14-year-old companion two weeks ago.

But Eric Jones, 19, the man who fatally stabbed Ricardo Hernandez, will not face charges, prosecutors said, because he was defending a friend from attack.

The decision outraged the victim’s family, relatives of the juveniles and community leaders of the Ventura Avenue neighborhood, where the victim lived.

“Instead of making the man who did it pay for it, they are making the boys pay for it,” said Rosa Hernandez, the victim’s mother. “That’s not fair. They have nothing to pay for.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. James D. Ellison said an extensive investigation by Ventura police found that Ricardo and the three other juveniles “armed themselves with rocks and a chain and instigated a fight” with Jones and three other men.

Two of the juveniles are 14 and from Ventura; the other, an Ojai resident, is 16. They are charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon by means likely to produce great bodily injury, and with conspiracy to commit such an assault.

In addition, they face a special allegation of committing the offenses in association with a street gang. Prosecutors said the three juveniles and Ricardo all have been identified as members of a Ventura gang.

Ellison said the facts did not support charging the youths with murder in Ricardo’s death. He said the law sometimes allows such a charge, but only when the initial crime--in this case, the alleged assault--carries a high probability of provoking a deadly response. “Most of those cases involve guns,” Ellison said.

Investigators said Jones and three friends were parked on a secluded road in Grant Park shortly after 8 p.m. on Oct. 9 when a truck containing several youths drove by and the two groups exchanged words.

The youths in the truck parked up the road, armed themselves with the rocks and chain, and walked down to confront Jones’ group, investigators said. One of them hit Jones’ friend, Jason Shipley, 19, with a rock and another struck Shipley with a chain, investigators said.

Jones took an eight-inch knife from a shoulder holster and stabbed Ricardo and the 16-year-old. The juveniles fled and Jones and his friends also left.

The 16-year-old received a minor cut, but Ricardo, with a punctured aorta, was mortally wounded. He died a short time afterward at a Ventura hospital.

One of the 14-year-olds was picked up at his residence Tuesday morning, and the other suspects were expected to be arrested by this morning, investigators said. They were to be housed at Juvenile Hall.

The mother of the first boy to be taken in expressed anguish at his arrest. “I don’t want him to be in jail,” she said, bursting into tears.

The father said his boy “didn’t do nothing.”

“The police said he used a deadly weapon. I don’t know what deadly weapon they are talking about. Jones did the knifing. He’s the one with the deadly weapon,” the father added.

He said his son told him that Jones stabbed Ricardo in the back while the juveniles were retreating.

But prosecutor Ellison said there is “no conclusive evidence that they were in retreat.”

“The location of the wounds . . . are such that it’s difficult if not impossible to establish how everybody was situated,” Ellison said.

Even if the juveniles were retreating, he said, the stabbing might have been justified under the law if Jones reasonably believed that they could renew their attack.

“You can use the amount of force necessary to defend yourself until you are secure from danger,” Ellison said.

A cousin of the other 14-year-old insisted that the arrests were outrageous. “They’re going to arrest Ricardo’s homies for backing him up, and let the killer go? That’s messed up,” he said.

Ricardo Hernandez’s sister, Elizabeth, 18, said the logic behind the charges escaped her. “I don’t think that’s fair, not even close.”

Ventura Avenue community leaders agreed.

“It’s outrageous,” said Roberta Payan, a coordinator of Renewed Avenue Pride, a community action group formed in June. She insisted that Ricardo was not a gang member.

“He had no criminal record,” Payan said. “Eric Jones was on probation, he was carrying a knife, he does the stabbing and gets off scot-free.”

Payan said the arrests will hinder her group’s efforts to soothe Ventura Avenue youths who are enraged about the stabbing.

“We were trying to tell the kids to calm down, to redirect their energies toward positive things, like organizing a fund-raiser to offset Ricardo’s funeral costs,” she said.

“These arrests compound the issue and make things worse. Now there are three families affected, not just one.”

Lorraine Sanchez, another coordinator of the group, expressed similar concerns. “This is going to be a major upset for the community, and I don’t know what is going to result from it,” she said.

Jones had been arrested on suspicion of murder the day after the stabbing, but prosecutors declined to file a homicide charge pending further investigation. He was sentenced to 30 days in County Jail for carrying the knife, a violation of probation conditions imposed when he pleaded guilty last year to vandalizing a park picnic table.

A woman who answered the phone at Jones’ home Tuesday said the family would have no comment on the case.