Trial Opens for Man Accused of Killing Boy, 2

Prosecutors opened their case Monday against a Van Nuys man accused of killing a 2-year-old child during an Easter Sunday picnic where a gun battle broke out.

Lawyers for both sides agreed that Larry Dean Shaw was one of at least four gunmen who fired more than 40 shots during the fight. But defense attorneys hope to convince a Van Nuys Superior Court jury that Shaw was not the man who opened fire near a gray Oldsmobile Cutlass, sending a bullet through the back window and striking the young boy hiding inside.

Attorney Douglas E. McCann told the jury that the mother of the slain boy, Ryan Brown, would testify that Shaw was not the man armed with two semiautomatic handguns who walked by the car and later fired the fatal shot into the back of her child’s head.

“If there was ever a case where you should listen to what the witnesses have to say, this is the case,” McCann said.

But the victim’s mother, Tamara Lee, did identify Shaw as the man who was toting guns in both hands when he took up a position behind the car where she had placed her child to escape the violence that had erupted in Balboa Park in Encino.

As the boy made his way from the back of the car to his mother’s open arms in the front seat, Lee heard a gunshot. “His eyes rolled back, and I fell on the ground until the shooting spopped,” she said.

Neither Lee nor her sister, Carla Lee, were able to testify that Shaw was firing his guns when Brown was shot.

Shaw, who turned 32 Monday, is charged in Brown’s murder, as well as the attempted murder of two other men, one of whom is confined to a wheelchair as a result of the injuries that he received during the shooting spree that followed a family picnic and Easter egg hunt.

Shaw sat calmly as Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen M. Cady showed the court two grisly photos of Brown’s body, in the hope of having them admitted as evidence.

Judge John Fisher ruled that the pictures, one of which shows the bullet’s exit wound near the boy’s right eye, held no value as evidence and may prejudice the jury against Shaw.