Outcry Over Shooting Grows : Dispute: Family calls for further inquiry into wounding of teen-ager by a Lynwood grocer. Prosecutors defend decision not to press charges.

Aldo Vega opened his collar to show the jagged patch of fresh scar tissue where the bullet hit his right clavicle, explaining that the bone deflected it into his neck.

His family agonized last month during the hours he was in surgery. Doctors had told them Vega could be paralyzed. But the teen-ager pulled through and is recovering, although he sometimes uses a cane to steady himself. And what he calls a “strange sensation” in his right wrist comes and goes.

A banner with dozens of signatures was stretched above a doorway in the Vega family home in Lynwood this week, reading: “Happy Birthday Aldo. Get Well Soon. From All Your Boxing Friends.”

The family’s living room was filled with more than a dozen trophies Aldo and his identical twin brother, Bardo, have won as amateur boxers. Two pairs of boxing gloves--one decorated with the Mexican flag, the other with the U.S. flag--hung on a living room wall.

Opening and closing his right fist, Aldo Vega said it is too soon to tell whether he will be able to continue boxing. He said he knows how close he came to being killed, and he is angry that the Lynwood grocer who shot him April 2 during a confrontation over a package of cookies he allegedly stole will not be prosecuted.

“That is not good,” said Vega, who turned 15 on April 14. “He committed a crime. He tried to kill me.”

The shooting has put Vega at the center of a growing controversy pitting prominent Mexican Americans against the district attorney’s office. They feel there are sufficient grounds to charge the grocer with assault with a deadly weapon, and have asked state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to conduct an independent investigation of the shooting.

“The facts of this case scream for a second opinion,” attorney Alex Jacinto wrote to Lungren.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said he has no problem with the call for Lungren to investigate. “This is frankly not that difficult a case from a legal viewpoint,” Garcetti said. “If the attorney general wants to spend the time looking at it, I’m sure he’ll arrive at the same decision we did.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Frohreich, who evaluated the case, said prosecutors do not condone Kim’s actions. But, “the obstacles to successful prosecution were just enormous,” she said. “We looked at it so closely. It disturbs us that merchants are taking off after kids over cookies.”

Vega, a ninth-grader at Lynwood’s Vista High School, said he did not steal anything from the market, and that he never threatened Kim. The teen-ager said he left the market with the cookies because Juan Gonzalez, a friend who remained in the store, said he would pay for them.

As Vega and Miguel Torres, 18, walked down the street eating the cookies, Vega said he heard tires screeching.

“I heard foul language, someone shouting, ‘Stop! (epithet)!’ ” Vega said. “I turned and I felt something hard on my neck, like something grabbed me. But I didn’t know I had been shot.”

Torres ran away, Vega said. “I walked across the street, and I fell down,” Vega said. “Then I knew I had been shot.”

Lynwood grocer Su Yong (Michael) Kim gave authorities a different version of the shooting. He said he believed that Vega and Torres had stolen cookies and potato chips from his store. Armed with a handgun, Kim chased the teen-agers in his car, authorities said.

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Kim confronted the youths a few blocks from the store where, he said, Torres threatened him with what he thought was a knife. Vega raised his shirt as though he were reaching for something in his waistband, Kim said.

“Originally, Kim claimed that he fired in self-defense,” prosecutors said in a report concluding that there was insufficient evidence to charge the grocer. In a later statement, prosecutors said, Kim told them the gun accidentally discharged as he moved it from one hand to the other.

Vega, his friend Gonzalez, who was in the grocery when the incident began, and a man who said he witnessed the shooting disputed several points in Kim’s account.

Prosecutors said the story Gonzalez is telling now is different from what he and others told investigators earlier. And other witnesses have confirmed Kim’s account, prosecutors said.

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Gonzalez, 16, said he told Kim that he was paying for everything. But the grocer insisted that Vega and Torres had taken more than Gonzalez was paying for, and refused to accept the money, Gonzalez said in an interview with The Times.

“I told Mr. Kim that everything was together,” said Gonzalez. He said he told Kim that Vega had not taken anything, but the grocer “got his gun and his car keys.”

Prosecutor Frohreich said Gonzalez told police a different version. “There was a lot of confusion about who was supposed to pay, but this is the first time I’ve heard from Gonzalez that Mr. Kim refused to accept any money,” she said.

Five boys were in the store together, and Gonzalez said he was paying for all of them, Frohreich said. Vega and Torres held up their items for the grocer to see and walked out of the store, she said.

But once Vega and Torres left, Gonzalez said he was not paying for their items, Frohreich said.

“Torres verified that,” Frohreich said. “He said he knew Gonzalez didn’t have enough money to pay for all of the stuff.”

She conceded that in the confusion, Vega may not have known Gonzalez was not going to pay.

Kim’s account of how the shooting occurred was challenged this week by a man who said he initially refused to talk to detectives, telling them he did not want to get involved. Roberto Hinojos, 30, said he was less than 100 feet away when Kim shot Vega.

Vega and Torres “were just walking,” Hinojos said from Idaho, where he was visiting friends. “I didn’t see them threatening the man. He got out of his car, shouted at these kids and started shooting.”

Hinojos, who said he is now willing to talk to investigators, said he heard four or five shots. But Frohreich said only one shot was fired.

Vega family members told a social worker at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center that Vega said he was shot when he was reaching for change, Frohreich said. But Vega’s brother, Elvis, 19, said, “We never told them that,” adding that “Aldo couldn’t speak” at that time because of the bullet wound.

Prosecutors said an independent eyewitness stated that Vega’s pockets were pulled out and his shirt flipped up just before the shooting.

No weapon was recovered, but a screwdriver was found about 12 feet from where the shooting took place, prosecutors said. Aldo Vega said in an interview that Torres had shown him the screwdriver, saying he carried it for protection.