Police Won’t Charge Man Arrested in Alley Ambush : Crime: Witnesses fail to identify him in lineup. Investigators are examining video that could provide alibi.

Los Angeles police announced late Friday that they will not seek charges against a 23-year-old man arrested in the brutal shooting of a 3-year-old girl, after witnesses failed to identify him in a police lineup and his guilt was called into question by a videotape that could place him about 350 miles away shortly before the slaying.

Vincent Caldera was arrested by Los Angeles police Wednesday night. But in a lineup Friday afternoon at County Jail, the reputed associate of the Mexican Mafia was not picked out by three witnesses as a shooter in the Sunday killing of Stephanie Kuhen, according to a public defender who attended the session. The child was a passenger in a car that was ambushed on a dead end of Isabel Street.

Lt. Harold Clifton of the Los Angeles Police Department said the witnesses had recognized Caldera in a police file photo but that he looked “significantly different” at Friday’s lineup.

“We’re going to get the D.A. to reject the charge,” Clifton, acting commander of the Northeast Division’s detectives, said at a news conference Friday night. “That doesn’t mean we have exonerated him.”

Police said they are following other leads in the case. A woman who was present at the Northeast Division station Friday night said her two sons, ages 16 and 21, were being held as suspects. The woman said her sons are innocent and that they were not present at the crime scene.

Caldera remained in police custody Friday night. Clifton did not say whether the decision not to seek charges would facilitate Caldera’s release. Because he is on parole for a manslaughter conviction, he can be held for 60 days before being formally charged with a crime or granted a hearing to determine if he violated terms of his parole.

The incident captured nationwide attention as an example of unprovoked urban violence directed at a motorist who made a wrong turn.

Investigators traveled Friday to the town of Watsonville, 15 miles south of Santa Cruz, to check the alibi of Caldera, a member of the Avenues gang. Among the evidence being examined is a surveillance tape from a Kmart department store. Friends and relatives of Caldera say the tape will place him far away from the shooting on Saturday night, at an hour that would have made it impossible for him to be in Los Angeles when the crime was committed early Sunday.

Law enforcement officials had been convinced that Caldera was in the dead end of Isabel Street at 1:45 a.m. Sunday, when a car that had apparently made a wrong turn was met with a fusillade of bullets from several gang members.

Wounded in the attack were Joseph Kuhen, 2, and the driver of the vehicle, Timothy Stone, 25.

Capt. Doc Warkentin, one of the commanders of the Northeast Division, said Friday that detectives were investigating the information provided by Caldera’s girlfriend’s family.

“All of the leads--what the family is saying, the phone tips we are receiving--we are following up on,” Warkentin said.

In Los Angeles and Watsonville, relatives of Caldera’s girlfriend said police investigators never questioned them about Caldera’s whereabouts before arresting him, and they have accused police of arresting Caldera in response to public pressure to find a culprit.

The prospect that LAPD investigators may have to turn Caldera loose could prove the latest in a series of public embarrassments for the department and its embattled chief, Willie L. Williams, who held a widely publicized news conference to announce Caldera’s arrest Thursday.

Last week, The Times published extensive excerpts from a Police Commission investigation into allegations that Williams accepted free accommodations in Las Vegas and then lied about it when questioned by the commission.

City leaders have openly questioned Williams’ integrity and leadership ability--criticism exacerbated by his $10-million claim against the city over reports published in The Times.

At the packed news conference Thursday, attended by media from across the nation, Williams said his detectives had a solid case and vowed that Caldera, whom he described as “vicious and vile,” would not be kicked back onto the streets to rejoin his fellow gang members.

“I don’t know if anything’s ever airtight, but we have a pretty good case,” the chief declared. “There’s no chance this man’s going to be out on the streets in the next 48 hours.”

Williams added that his detectives had been working closely with officials from the district attorney’s office since the beginning, saying they assured him charges would be filed against Caldera.

“The district attorney was also here [Wednesday] night and we have assurances that the charges I indicated--the one [murder] charge . . . and the five counts of attempted murder--will be filed and will be prosecuted,” Williams said Thursday. He did not respond to requests for an interview Friday.

But Michael Genelin, head of the district attorney’s hard-core gang unit, said Friday that prosecutors never agreed to file any charges because they have yet to see all the evidence.

“I’m not sure what the chief based that [statement] on, but those assurances were not given,” Genelin said. “We had two attorneys who were assisting in the investigation. I have spoken to both attorneys, and they certainly did not give those assurances.”

Caldera’s family says he was in Watsonville with his girlfriend and her family during the entire weekend of the shooting. The relatives Caldera allegedly visited corroborated that story Friday, saying he arrived with his girlfriend, Nora Carrillo, and her parents, brother and cousin early Saturday and left shortly after noon Monday.

Caldera and his girlfriend also visited the Kmart around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, according to Angelica Medina, the aunt of Caldera’s girlfriend.

“He was here on Friday. He arrived like about 1 a.m. and then he left at 12:30 p.m. Monday,” she said. “They were here for a barbecue with family from Mexico. That happened like around 9:30 p.m. [Saturday]. Then they went to Kmart.”

Watsonville is 346 miles from Los Angeles, on U.S. 101.

A store manager at the Watsonville Kmart said LAPD officers were reviewing store surveillance tapes Friday afternoon, but would not say when the video was recorded.

“At this time, there are officers of the LAPD here and we’re cooperating with them on a case. I can’t comment at this time on what case it is,” general manager Vince Padula said Friday afternoon. “They are looking at videotapes we have supplied them. They are interior surveillance tapes.”

Caldera is a suspected Mexican Mafia associate believed to be involved in the prison syndicate’s ruthless move to organize drug trafficking among Latino street gangs.

In other developments Friday, records obtained by The Times show that David Dalton, a passenger who was uninjured in the attack, was arrested and charged with possession of methamphetamine after a Pasadena police officer noticed him careening off vehicles while riding his bicycle on the Tournament of Roses parade route in the early morning before this year’s parade. A bench warrant was issued May 31 for failing to appear in court, according to county criminal court documents in Pasadena.

In addition, the car’s driver, Timothy Stone, was arrested in June, 1990, by Fontana police and charged with suspicion of possessing cocaine, a felony. Charges were dismissed a year later after Stone completed a court-ordered drug diversion program.

Police said Thursday that they had no reason to doubt the account of the shooting given by Stone and Dalton.

Dalton’s father, David Dalton Sr., called the drug incidents irrelevant to his granddaughter’s brutal slaying.

Dalton also cautioned against a rush to judgment against the man accused of killing his granddaughter.

“If [Caldera] is innocent, they should release him the instant they find out,” he said. “But right now I have to put my confidence in the police.”

Times staff writers Tom Gorman and Jim Newton contributed to this story.