Teen-Agers Ordered to Face Trial Over Shootout

Two teen-agers on Thursday were ordered to stand trial on attempted murder and other charges arising from a November shootout that terrorized a Huntington Beach neighborhood, leaving one suspect dead and two people wounded, including a sheriff’s deputy.

After a preliminary hearing here this week, Municipal Court Judge Robert Gallivan ruled there was sufficient evidence to try Keith Gonzalez, 19, of Garden Grove, and Travis Claude, 19, of Long Beach on four felony counts each.

Both men are scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 4 in Orange County Superior Court on charges of conspiracy, attempted murder in the second degree, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Court officials said videotaped statements by each defendant were given to Gallivan, but were not played in the courtroom.

Prosecutors are also seeking to try a third suspect, a 17-year-old boy whose name has been withheld, as an adult because of the seriousness of the crimes. A fourth suspect, 17-year-old Ryan Mones of Huntington Beach, committed suicide rather than face arrest, law enforcement officials have said.

The incident began about 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 7, when Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Derek Franklin approached a car parked near Bolsa Chica State Beach. The four youths inside the car, who authorities say were interrupted as they were planning a robbery, allegedly fired about 100 rounds at Franklin.

Franklin was injured but was able to call for additional deputies, who chased the four down Pacific Coast Highway and eventually into a Huntington Beach condominium complex.

Residents of the Harbor Pacific Complex were terrorized by more gunfire and the sound of a police helicopter circling overhead as more than 40 officers, including a police special weapons team, searched for the suspects.

During the six-hour search, resident Roland Britton, 45, walked out of his condominium and encountered a man with a rifle. When Britton turned and ran, he was shot twice.

Authorities arrested Claude inside a Huntington Beach restaurant within 45 minutes of the first shooting. Mones’ body would be discovered at 2 a.m., slumped in a carport and dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The 17-year-old suspect was found two hours later, when a helicopter equipped with a heat detector spotted him hiding on the porch of a vacant condo unit.

Gonzalez was arrested at his Garden Grove home about 10 a.m. the next morning.

Britton was treated for gunshot wounds to his thigh and buttocks. Franklin was treated for eye and facial injuries from flying glass and metal shards. But he faced additional surgery to remove metal fragments from his eye.