Member of Gang Guilty in Slaying of Girl at Club : Courts: Teen-ager faces up to 20 years to life in prison. Victim was fatally shot while waiting for a ride home from a dance.

An Inglewood gang member was convicted of second-degree murder Wednesday in the shooting death last year of a 12-year-old girl at a dance at the Boys & Girls Club in Pacoima.

After 2 1/2 days of deliberations, a Van Nuys Superior Court jury convicted Damian Vann, 18, in the Jan. 9, 1993, slaying of Tiffany Dozier, a seventh-grade student at Maclay Middle School. Vann faces a maximum 20 years to life in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 1. by Judge Stanley Weisberg.

Tiffany was shot in the back while waiting for a ride home after a fight broke out among rival gang members at the dance, which had been organized by parents to keep their children out of trouble and to raise funds for the youth center. Gang members, however, showed up at the club and caused a disturbance that led to gunfire.

Vann, who was a juvenile at the time of the shooting but was ordered to stand trial as an adult, admitted his role in the slaying, said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Nantroup.

Nantroup said the evidence included Vann’s “statement to police that he did shoot into the crowd.”

Vann said he fired in self-defense in the mistaken belief that he was being threatened by youths at the dance who scattered when they heard a gunshot.

The gun used to kill Tiffany, a .32-caliber semiautomatic handgun, was turned in by one of Vann’s friends after Vann called the boy during a police interview and asked him to surrender the weapon, according to Los Angeles Police Detective Gary Holbrook. Ballistics tests confirmed this weapon fired the bullet that killed Tiffany.

Defense attorney Michael E. Goodman had asked the jury to convict Vann on a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. He said the jury did not believe the prosecutor’s argument that the shooting was premeditated, a requirement for a first-degree murder conviction, even though Vann brought a loaded gun to the event.

But Nantroup, who had asked for a first-degree murder conviction, said the evidence showed that at the time of the shooting the crowd had already dispersed and Tiffany was running with a friend up a driveway leading to the club. “It’s terribly sad,” he said.

The man who apparently fired that first shot into the air seconds before Vann’s bullet struck Tiffany pleaded guilty last year to negligently discharging a firearm. Tremayne Stevenson, 21, of North Hollywood was sentenced to three years’ probation. He received no jail term beyond the 154 days he had spent in jail before sentencing.