Friends of Hit-Run Victim Attend Motorist’s Trial : Courts: Sherman Oaks students fondly recall 13-year-old classmate killed in accident.

VAN NUYS — A year and a half after 13-year-old Matthew Fischer was killed by a hit-and-run driver, his pals still miss him and remember him as their class clown.

So about a dozen students from the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies say they gave up a day of school to spend Thursday in a courtroom to learn about justice firsthand.

They came on the first day of trial for Joan Mills, a 60-year-old Woodland Hills woman charged with vehicular manslaughter for allegedly running down Matthew seconds after he stepped off a school bus Nov. 19, 1993, then fleeing the scene of the fatal accident.

“We wanted to see what happened and to show our support,” said JeremeAlvin, who had known Matthew since kindergarten.

What they heard was grim.

Matthew was struck in a crosswalk at Oxnard Street and Shoup Avenue in front of stunned witnesses--including a schoolmate who had gotten off the bus with him. He was propelled into the air, then his body slammed onto the hood of the car, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Schuit told the jury.

“For a brief point in time, the two of them were literally face to face, with the defendant driving the car and the victim over the windshield,” Schuit said. The boy was dying when he landed on the roadway, 60 feet from the curb, he said.

Later that day, the prosecutor said, Mills told police she thought she had hit a dog.

Matthew’s parents and schoolmates packed the courtroom to paint a human face for the jury of the creative, bright and funny boy with mischievous brown eyes. He aspired to be a journalist, his parents said. In elementary school, Matthew and a friend founded a newspaper they called The Scholar, friends recalled.

“He was funny. We’d goof around a lot,” said friend and schoolmate Brian Marinoff.

Fischer’s mother, Carol, wore a lapel pin framing a photograph of her two sons, Matthew and his younger brother, Cory, as she took the witness stand.

She told the jury that the last time she spoke to Matthew was on the morning he died. She asked him if he would like a ride home from school. He said he would take the bus. The next time she saw him was in the back of an ambulance.

Matthew, an eighth-grader, had a green light when he entered the crosswalk, Schuit said.

Mills, driving a light blue Toyota Corolla, was speeding through the intersection at about 40 m.p.h., running a red light and shaking her finger at another motorist who had the right of way, the prosecutor contended.

“The defendant looked out the window and wagged her finger at the other driver, as if to say, ‘How dare you cut me off when I’m running a red light,’ ” Schuit told the jury.

Then, Schuit alleged, Mills struck Matthew in front of stunned witnesses.

One witness told police she saw taillights flashing, and the driver appeared to slow down and pull over briefly, before speeding away, Schuit said. Another mistakenly believed the driver of a convertible was losing laundry out of the back of the car.

Schoolmate Michael Kane, now 14, testified that he was heading in another direction when he turned and looked back “by chance.” He said he had known Matthew for more than six years.

“I just looked back and saw him get hit,” Kane told the jury. “The impact sent him flying though the air.”

The driver, he testified, was a woman wearing a baseball cap.

Because the eyewitness accounts varied, Schuit said, police had no suspects until Mills’ husband led officers to her damaged car a few blocks from the accident scene. The husband will not be testifying for the prosecution, Schuit said, because legal rules of marital privilege prevent spouses from incriminating each other. But the prosecutor praised him for “having a conscience.”

Defense attorney Ira Salzman said the case is “a tragic accident,” but Mills’ conduct was not criminal.

“The People will be seeking to prove that my client committed gross negligence and had no conscience. Whatever Mrs. Mills’ conduct was, it was not gross negligence. The defendant did have a conscience,” he said.

As Mills was being taken to the police station, she blurted to Los Angeles Police Sgt. Monte Houze, “I thought it was a dog,” Schuit said. The prosecutor then discounted that excuse.

“No reasonable person would have thought they hit a dog,” Schuit told the jury. “A reasonable person in her shoes should have known they hit a child wearing clothing and carrying a red backpack, a child who for a brief moment was face to face with her.”

Mills, who was charged with drunk driving in 1985--a fact her jury will never know because it has been ruled inadmissible evidence--pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter in January. But her plea was withdrawn after Superior Court Judge Michael R. Hoff determined that her previous conviction made Mills ineligible for probation.

Testimony in the case resumes Monday.