Prosecutor Details Slaying of Gas Station Attendant : Courts: The trial of landscaper Oscar Lemus begins. The jury is told the shooting occurred during a ‘cold robbery.’

A gang member accused of fatally shooting a gas station clerk in Seal Beach was engaged in a “cold robbery” that netted just $160 and sundries including sunflower seeds and condoms, a prosecutor told jurors on Wednesday.

Oscar Lemus, 19, of Long Beach and an accomplice tried to implicate rivals by scrawling the name of an enemy gang on a wall in the Arco service station where the victim was found slain early March 12, Deputy Dist. Atty. Vickie L. Hix said as Lemus’ trial began.

Lemus, a landscaper living with his parents, is accused of firing the shots that killed night clerk Danette Garrett, 33, of Long Beach. The defendant says he was at home then and could not have participated.

If convicted in Orange County Superior Court, Lemus could face up to life in prison without possibility of parole because the slaying allegedly occurred during a robbery.

The alleged accomplice, Mario Luis Ortiz, who was 14 years old at the time, faces a separate murder trial under a new law allowing juveniles as young as 14 to be tried as adults for the most serious crimes. The trial for Ortiz, the first youth charged in Orange County under the new law, is set to begin next week.

The defendants were first linked to the killing by a fingerprint traced to Ortiz, Hix said. A search of Ortiz’s home in Long Beach turned up batteries and condoms from the store, along with a newspaper article about the murder, she said. Ortiz allegedly implicated Lemus during questioning by police, Hix said in an interview. The murder weapon was not recovered.

But Lemus’ defense attorney said in an interview that his client was watching movies with his family on the night of the slaying. Deputy Public Defender Christian R. Jensen, who did not offer a statement to jurors Wednesday, said he would challenge the account of Lemus’ girlfriend, who told police the defendants went to the gas station for food that night.

“[Lemus] wasn’t there. They don’t have any evidence that can put him there,” Jensen said.

Hix said the two defendants, identified by police as members of a Long Beach gang, were at the beach with their dates and later pulled into the all-night gas station for snacks. The prosecutor said Lemus’ girlfriend saw him take an object from a compartment in the car where he stowed a gun. The two defendants went inside, came out about 15 minutes later and appeared to be moving something in the trunk, Hix told jurors. The group sped off, she said.

Police found Garrett’s body in an upstairs office after a newspaper delivery driver noticed the front door was open but the indoor lights were off. Hix said Garrett had been chased upstairs and shot three times. A computer printer and two telephones also were stolen, she said.

A wall and door contained graffiti referring to a rival Long Beach gang. Seal Beach Police Officer Ron LaVelle testified that he arrived to find packets of sunflower seeds strewn on the steps leading to the office. Ortiz’s fingerprint was found on a packet, Hix said, and the defendants got into the car with sunflower seeds.

Lemus was arrested in Long Beach on March 31. He told police he was in Seal Beach with the group two or three weeks earlier but denied going to the Arco station, Hix said. She said when police found a gun in his home, Lemus said, “That’s not the gun.”

Garrett, a native of California, had moved from Florida to rebuild her life after a troubled marriage that ended with her moving into a shelter for battered women. She was saving up for her own apartment and had a second job at a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant.