Boy Recounts Halloween Murders : Courts: 14-year-old says he was lucky to escape injury from shots that left three friends dead and three wounded.

A nervous 14-year-old boy told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury Wednesday that he will never forget Halloween night, 1993, because three of his friends were shot to death and three others were wounded as the group walked home from a Pasadena birthday party.

In the second day of testimony in the so-called Halloween murders--which made national headlines when the young boys, allegedly mistaken for gang members, were gunned down in a volley of bullets--jurors heard from the only member in the group who escaped from the attack uninjured.

The boy, who was 12 at the time of the shootings, said he was lucky because when he first saw the “little blue spark” pass by his foot, he ran and hid in a nearby yard.

Jurors in the murder trial of three men accused of killing Edgar Evans, 13, and Stephen Coats and Reggie Crawford, both 14, alternately craned to hear the testimony of the soft-spoken teen-ager and glanced at the weeping mother of one of the victims.

The three defendants--Lorenzo Alex Newborn, 25, Karl Holmes, 20, and Herbert Charles McClain Jr., 26--have pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder in the case before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge J.D. Smith. If convicted, each could face the death penalty. Two other defendants, Aurelius Bailey and Solomon Bowen, will be tried separately next month.

The teen-ager told the court that a group of 10 boys left the birthday party before 10 p.m. that Sunday night. The group made their way to a local market at Villa and Wilson streets--trick-or-treating as they went--where they played around with the pay phones, he said.

The boy testified that while at the market, one member of the group almost got hit by a car.

“He jumped back from the car,” the boy said, demonstrating how his friend shrugged his shoulders and raised his palms up. “[And he said] ‘What’s up?’ ”

Prosecutors contend that the attack on the boys was an act of revenge by a small, violent Pasadena gang, following the killing of one of their cohorts the same night.

The boys, one of whom wore a black bandanna and another of whom carried a blue head covering, were mistaken for members of a rival gang during the altercation on the corner, prosecutors have said.

The boy said that three in the group of 10 boys split off from the larger group, while he and seven others continued on their way. The shooting started soon after, said the teen-ager, who mumbled many of his answers.

“I heard a boom,” he said. “It was like one big boom then a whole bunch of shots.”

The teen-ager said he saw a blue spark pass his foot and then ran, hopping a nearby gate and coming to rest behind the barbecue pit of a nearby house. He was soon joined by another boy who cried that he’d been shot--a claim the boy said he doubted at first, because the friend also hopped a gate to get away from the shooting.

After hearing about 20 “popping sounds,” the boy said he left his hiding spot to see what had happened.

“My homies [were] on the ground shot,” he said. “I didn’t know who it was at first.”

He first encountered Edgar, apart from the other two, sprawled out on the concrete stairs of a nearby house. Stephan lay on the sidewalk, while his brother, Kenny, knelt screaming over his body.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonlyn Callahan--admonished by Smith to make their display of the gruesome photos brief--showed the boy photos of one friend’s injuries and three other friends’ bodies for the boy to identify. The boy looked at the pictures without flinching.

On cross-examination by McClain’s attorney, H. Elizabeth Harris, the boy acknowledged that some of Wednesday’s detailed testimony about the make of the cars that cruised by the boys and the race of their occupants were things he has remembered since he was interviewed by police and since he testified before a grand jury last year.

Defense attorneys have claimed that their clients have long been singled out for police harassment and that the prosecution case relies on the testimony of convicted felons, witnesses with faulty memories and people hoping to exchange their testimony for reward money.