Charges Dropped in Fatal Shooting : Law enforcement: The district attorney concludes that the killing at a Feb. 28 party was in self-defense. The gunman and another man are released.

Declaring “there is persuasive evidence” that a Ventura man acted in self-defense when he fatally shot a teen-ager at a party in February, the district attorney on Wednesday dismissed murder charges against him.

The defendant, Stanislado Gomez, 25, was released from Ventura County Jail, where he had been held in lieu of $250,000 bail since the Feb. 28 shooting.

At the same time, a charge of being an accessory to murder against Alonzo Rangel, 22, of Ventura was also dropped.

The district attorney’s “statement of reasons” was made public at a brief hearing before Ventura County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch.

Timothy Moss, 17, of Oxnard was shot four times during a party at a house on Comanche Court in the Ventura Avenue area.

What happened in the ensuing chaos required an “intensive investigation . . . over a seven-week period,” according to court papers filed Wednesday by the county prosecutor.

In the end, the prosecutor decided that “there is persuasive evidence that Gomez shot Moss because he believed there was imminent danger that Moss would shoot him or someone in the kitchen” of the residence.

Initially, the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Saundra T. Brewer, said investigators believed that Gomez was a member of a gang that associated with skinheads who have exhibited racial animosity toward blacks.

Moss, who arrived at the party carrying a 9-millimeter pistol, was black.

At the time of Gomez’s arrest, his attorney, Willard P. Wiksell, said there was “nothing racial at all” about the slaying and called it “a clear-cut case of self-defense.”

On Wednesday, Brewer said the shooting was not gang-related.

She said, however, that Gomez was known to the Ventura Police Department as an associate--but not a member--of the Ventura Avenue Gangsters.

Wiksell could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Here is the sequence of events leading up to the shooting, as pieced together by district attorney’s office investigators:

Moss--the subject of an outstanding warrant for his arrest on suspicion of shooting at an inhabited dwelling and three counts of assault with a firearm--arrived at the house on Comanche Court about 9:30 p.m.

Although friends urged Moss to leave his gun in his car, he refused and displayed the weapon in the house.

Tensions among the 80 or more party-goers mounted when a girl made racially inflammatory remarks, and Moss then “made statements indicating his intent to use his gun if the perceived hostilities continued.”

Moss and several blacks walked outside and shot a round over the heads of several people standing at the curb. One of them, Ethan Boyle, fired a shot that hit the roof of the house. Boyle, who was subsequently found to be in violation of probation stemming from prior misdemeanor cases, is serving a year and 10 days in County Jail.

After firing several shots into the air, Moss re-entered the house and “joined a ‘stampede’ of people who were yelling, screaming and heading for the kitchen and back yard,” the prosecutor said.

Gomez had remained in the kitchen and did not know what was happening outside, investigators said. Suddenly, Moss “burst into the kitchen, still holding the gun, which was cocked and ready to fire,” the papers said. “There was no time for detached reflection.”

According to a witness, Moss entered the kitchen with “the gun pointed at him (the witness),” the district attorney’s report says. “As he dove to the kitchen floor, he heard gunshots that sounded very close.”

Gomez yelled “Get down, get down!” to those in the crowded kitchen before firing four shots into Moss, according to the court papers.

Brewer said Wednesday that all four bullets hit Moss in the rear portions of his right hip, the left side of his back, right shoulder blade and right side of his head.

“The shots were fired in very rapid succession,” she said. “The victim was stumbling and falling” as the shots were being fired.

“We don’t know where he got his gun,” Brewer said of the 9-millimeter handgun Gomez used.

“Under these turbulent circumstances, Gomez reasonably could have been afraid for his own life and/or that of the other people standing in the crowded kitchen,” the district attorney’s report concluded.