No Felony Charges to Be Filed Against Area Tagger : Graffiti: Prosecutors say they can’t prove David Hillo caused the fatal shooting of his friend by a Sun Valley man.

No felony charges will be brought against a 20-year-old tagger shot by a Sun Valley man last month, prosecutors announced Thursday--eliminating the issue of whether the wounded man should be charged with the murder of his slain friend.

Prosecutors said they could not prove that David Hillo of North Hollywood tried to rob William A. Masters II, 35, or was responsible for causing Masters to shoot and kill Hillo’s friend, Cesar Rene Arce, 18, of Arleta.

Masters happened upon the two taggers on a late-night stroll in Arleta Jan. 31 and jotted down their car’s license plate number. Masters said the two demanded the paper back. He said that after he returned it they menaced and tried to rob him, so he shot them in self-defense.

Hillo has denied the robbery attempt. He conceded he was carrying a screwdriver, which he said he did not brandish as a weapon.

The district attorney’s office ruled Feb. 2 that Masters could not be prosecuted for Arce’s death, saying Masters felt sufficiently threatened to use his gun under California legal provisions governing killing in self-defense. Any trial would simply boil down to Masters’ word against Hillo’s, prosecutors said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Cohen used similar reasoning Thursday in explaining why he would not charge Hillo with attempted armed robbery.

“Masters is . . . the only witness who could testify against Hillo,” wrote Cohen in the statement outlining why charges would not be filed. “There is insufficient evidence, given our burden of proof ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ to file this charge.”

That decision means Hillo is no longer in danger of being charged with his friend’s slaying. Under California law, prosecutors can charge someone with murder for any death caused by the commission of a crime, even the death of an accomplice.

If Hillo had been charged with armed robbery, the district attorney’s office might have felt obligated to charge him with murder as well, a common action in such cases.

“I wouldn’t want to be blamed for my own friend’s death,” Hillo said Thursday after learning of the district attorney’s decision. “I wouldn’t be able to live with that. I didn’t think I was going to be prosecuted anyway.”

When he heard the decision, Masters vowed to sue the city for not charging Hillo. “I know of 100 people who will gladly contribute to a (legal expense) fund,” said Masters, who was widely praised by graffiti-haters for shooting Arce. “I will not have to pay one cent.”

Both Masters and Hillo, however, still face possible misdemeanor charges. The city attorney’s office is considering whether to charge Masters with carrying a concealed firearm without a permit. A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said the office has referred Hillo’s case to the city attorney for possible charges of vandalism and intimidation.

Masters, a sometime actor and screenwriter, has become a celebrity following the encounter, widely interviewed and hailed on radio talk shows by many who said they were sick of crime and graffiti.

His comments after being released from jail, however, infuriated Latino activists. He called Hillo and Arce “Mexican skinheads” and blamed Arce’s mother for her son’s death, saying that if he was a criminal, she must not have raised him properly.

A group of Latino attorneys met with Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti last week, urging him to reopen the case against Masters, but Garcetti refused. The attorneys said they would seek federal civil rights charges against Masters.