Trial Begins for Pair Charged in Drive-By Killing of Woman, 20 : Thousand Oaks: Prosecutor says the gunman in the May 31 shooting was aiming for gang rivals and missed.

More than seven months after Jennifer Jordan stepped outside for a cigarette and was struck by a bullet from a passing car, the two men charged with her murder went on trial Tuesday in Ventura County Superior Court.

In his opening statement, Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn described the alleged gunman, Scott M. Kastan, 18, of Westlake Village as an upper-class gang member who committed the drive-by shooting last May 31 to get back at a rival gang.

Co-defendant Patrick H. Strickland, 22, knew what Kastan was planning and told the driver of the car to slow down so the gunman could stand in the sunroof and take aim, Glynn said.

But instead of hitting two rival gang members, Glynn said, the bullet struck Jordan, 20, the mother of a 15-month-old girl. Jordan did not belong to a gang, investigators say, but was attending a party where some gang members were present.

Strickland’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Joseph P. VillaSana, agreed with Glynn on one thing: Kastan did the shooting. But he said the evidence would show that Strickland had no part in it.

“This was a spontaneous act of violence by Scott Kastan and nobody else in the car knew he was going to shoot,” VillaSana said.

Kastan’s attorney, James Edward Blatt, said he would reserve his opening statement until after the prosecution presents its case.

Pretrial motions indicate that Blatt hopes to raise doubts about witnesses’ identification of Kastan as the shooter. The attorney hired actors and a camera crew to make a videotape aimed at showing that the lighting conditions on the night of the shooting made identification impossible.

Though he made no statement to the jurors, Blatt had strong words for the prosecutor after the panel was sent home for the day. He blasted Glynn for referring to his client as a “millionaire businessman’s son” and asked Judge Lawrence Storch to declare a mistrial.

“It’s an effort to incite and mislead the jury,” Blatt said. “What difference does it make?” He also objected to Glynn’s comment that the shooting took place “not in South-Central Los Angeles . . . not in an impoverished neighborhood,” but on Houston Drive, in a middle-class neighborhood of Thousand Oaks.

Blatt said the reference to a gang-infested area of Los Angeles was aimed at scaring jurors about what could happen in Ventura County. He called the remark racist and offensive.

Glynn replied that some jurors, when questioned about their views on gangs, had said that in some poor neighborhoods people join gangs for survival.

“It’s very significant that this gang-related activity took place in an upper-class area,” Glynn said. “There was no pressure to belong to a gang. It was strictly a choice of the defendant.”

Storch said he saw nothing improper in the neighborhood reference. “All the prosecutor was saying is that this occurred in middle-class America,” Storch said.

But the judge agreed that the financial status of Kastan’s father “doesn’t belong in this trial.” He refused to declare a mistrial but said he would tell the jury today to ignore the millionaire reference.

Relatives of the defendants and the victim were among the spectators as Glynn described the fatal shooting. Kastan’s parents took seats in the back of the courtroom, and at one point he turned and grinned at them. Strickland’s mother and several relatives sat on the opposite side of the courtroom. The victim’s father sat in the front row.

When Glynn made reference to a bullet hitting Jordan in the back of her head, the victim’s brother turned and glared at Kastan’s parents. A few moments later, when the prosecutor said Kastan had gloated about the killing at a party later that night, the brother ran from the courtroom.

The trial is expected to take two to three weeks. If convicted of first-degree murder, the defendants would face a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. In addition, they are charged with two counts of attempted murder, and Kastan also is charged with using a firearm and inflicting great bodily injury on Jordan.