Jury Deliberates in Murder Trial

Larry Dean Shaw made a conscious decision when he initiated a gun battle and fatally shot a 2-year-old boy in an Encino Park on Easter Sunday, a prosecutor said Monday.

“The defendant went to the park, basically loaded to the gills, got out two firearms and started shooting people,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen M. Cady told a Van Nuys Superior Court jury on the last day of Shaw’s trial.

Shaw, 32, is accused of murder in the death of Ryan Brown, who was struck once in the head as his mother attempted to pull him from a car she originally intended to use as an escape vehicle when violence erupted at a picnic and Easter egg hunt in Balboa Park.

Cady also asked the jury to convict Shaw on two counts of attempted murder for shooting 30-year-old James Anthony Wright, who is paralyzed from the waist down as a result of wounds suffered that day, and Damon Keith Napier, a 29-year-old Sherman Oaks man who was struck in the abdomen.

Shaw made specific choices and therefore had the intent necessary for conviction, Cady said, demonstrating for the jury how witnesses described Shaw as holding a 9-millimeter gun in each hand and “shooting OK Corral-style.”

The prosecutor said that as police chased Shaw after the shooting, he threw his guns out of his car when he was momentarily out of the officers’ sight.

“What you can see from the defendant’s actions is he makes decisions in a very cold and calculated manner,” Cady said.

Defense attorney Douglas E. McCann acknowledged that Shaw was one of at least four men shooting in the park that evening. But he asked the jury to convict his client on much lesser charges--unlawful discharge of a firearm--because of what he called problems with witness identifications of the man holding two guns.

“This is basically an identity case,” McCann said, “or, as the judge called it, a whodunit.”

Tamara Lee, mother of Ryan Brown, and her sister, Carla, gave “prior inconsistent statements” that should lead the jury to question their identification of Shaw during his trial, McCann said.

The jury of 11 women and one man deliberated for about two hours Monday afternoon without reaching a decision. The panel is scheduled reconvene today.