Suspect in Brawl Will Stand Trial as an Adult : Violence: Boy, 17, faces two counts of assault with a deadly weapon in melee. Two Westlake High School students were wounded by gunfire.

A judge Wednesday ordered a Thousand Oaks 17-year-old to be tried as an adult on charges connected to an off-campus brawl that left two Westlake High School students hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath’s decision came after a full day of hearings that for the first time gave a detailed account of how the high-profile brawl came about.

The judge’s decision to try 17-year-old James Lee as an adult surprised the attorney for the defendant described by prosecutors as a main instigator of the melee. Lee, one of two Westlake High School students charged in the incident, faces two counts of assault with a deadly weapon.

Lee and three other Asian teen-agers were charged with various crimes relating to the Feb. 3 melee that began after Lee and a school football player agreed to engage in a fistfight at North Ranch Park near the campus.

Two supporters of the football player--Curtis Simmons--have been released from the hospital and are recovering after being shot in the back and the head, authorities said.

“I believe the circumstances of the offense certainly explain why he is fit to be tried as a minor. We will plead not guilty and defend” against the charges, Lee’s attorney, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., said after McGrath’s ruling.

Over the objections of a prosecutor, McGrath set Lee’s bail at $5,000 and scheduled the defendant’s initial appearance in adult court for 9 a.m. this morning.

Meanwhile, a prosecutor said that an arrest warrant has been issued for Lee’s 19-year-old brother, Frank Lee, in connection with the case. Deputy Dist. Atty. John U. Vanarelli would not say what charges Frank Lee faces in the warrant, although in court Vanarelli accused the older Lee of arranging for the weapons used at the brawl.

Vanarelli said authorities are searching for Frank Lee, but have been unable to find him since the shooting.

Wednesday’s hearing for James Lee was the first of four such dates scheduled to determine whether the juveniles charged in the case will be tried in adult court.

“I am very happy,” said Danny Simmons, the father of Curtis Simmons, who was clubbed with blunt objects during the brawl. “I think it’s a win for us.”

At the hearing Wednesday, five police investigators testified that James and Frank Lee planned at least a week in advance to have their friends show up at the park for the fight.

Furthermore, they said that Simmons recruited at least two football teammates for the brawl. He also showed up at the park with about 40 other supporters.

The investigators said on the witness stand that the agreement by James Lee and Curtis Simmons to fight was preceded by another fight they had months earlier. In that first fight, the much-larger Simmons broke Lee’s nose with a single punch.

The ongoing feud died down for several months after the first fight. But it resumed for no known reasons when the two exchanged threats, Lee vowing to shoot Simmons and Simmons promising to “break Lee’s back,” one investigator testified.

About a week before the brawl, James Lee phoned a Rowland Heights teen-ager and enlisted him as backup in the planned park fight, testified Deputy Jeffrey D. Allaire.

“James Lee had called him about a week before the fight,” Allaire said. “He said there was going to be a fight, and he needed his help.”

The Rowland Heights youth, who is Laotian-American, has been charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors said the call to the Rowland Heights teen-ager--identified in court testimony as a member of an Asian gang--proves James Lee had a role in planning the brawl and thus the two shooting injuries.

As James Lee prepared for the park showdown, so did his brother Frank, who is not a student, investigators testified.

Detective Randy Pentis said another teen-ager from Rowland Heights told investigators he and several other Asian-American youths were asked to the fight by Frank Lee.

“They were going up to Thousand Oaks to fight a football player who was going to fight Frank’s brother,” Pentis said.

The investigators said on the day of the incident, as Simmons himself was lining up football players to join him at the park, James Lee’s friends met at a grocery store on Westlake Boulevard.

Some were out of school, but others, still school-aged, skipped classes to go to the fight that day. But James Lee was at school. So his friends left the grocery store and picked him up from Westlake High before returning to near the store for a brief planning session on how they were going to approach Curtis Simmons, investigators said.

From there, they went to the park, where Frank Lee was first to emerge from a car and take a swing at Curtis Simmons, investigators said. Simmons blocked Frank Lee’s punch and threw Lee to the ground, investigators said.

That is when James Lee pounded Simmons in the back with a wooden board, investigators testified. A group of Asian youths then surrounded Simmons and began swinging boards, baseball bats and metal anti-car theft devices at the football player, described as more than 6 feet tall and 200 pounds.

The fight broke up after other football players joined in, and then gunfire erupted.

Investigators said an Asian-American youth from Brea, who is charged with two counts of assault with a firearm, pulled out a gun and pointed it at one of the white football players.

“I pointed the gun at him, and I was thinking, ‘Should I fire?’ ” the Brea youth told investigators. “I pulled the trigger and he fell to the ground.”

Pentis said the youth then “saw another large white guy beating up one of his homies, so he fired at him also.”

That bullet missed, investigators said.

For James Lee’s defense, two pastors and a psychologist testified that the teen-ager is remorseful over his role in the brawl and for the humiliation it has caused his parents.

Psychologist Jerry Bokoles said a lengthy interview he had with James Lee revealed that Lee agreed to the fight because he thought he had no other alternative.

“I think he felt kind of trapped and didn’t know what to do, very harassed by this fellow (Curtis Simmons),” Bokoles said. “. . . I think he saw almost no other options. He didn’t feel like he was being protected by the principals at the school.”