Slain Teen Was ‘Hunted Down,’ Jurors Told

After arguing with a group of youths at Fallbrook Mall, two men riding in a car with four teenage girls “hunted down and killed” a 16-year-old Taft High School student, shooting nine times at the boy and five others, a prosecutor said Friday.

“You had a shooting gallery out there,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Laura Baird said in her closing argument to a Van Nuys Superior Court jury. “But for [accused gunman Tommy Lee] Williams’ bad aim, you could have had a massacre.”

Defense lawyers countered that two of the girls, who came from well-to-do families and attended private schools, had lied. Each had been booked for murder, but charges were dropped and the girls granted immunity when they agreed to become star prosecution witnesses.

The jury is to begin deliberating the first-degree murder charges against Williams and Elliott O’Neal Singletary on Monday.

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The shooting on June 9, 1995, killed Ramtin Shaolian, hospitalized a friend for a day with a leg wound. The defendants were both identified by police and prosecutors as having gang ties, but the girls--one described as a straight-A student--came from comfortable homes in upscale neighborhoods south of Ventura Boulevard.

Eyewitnesses testified earlier in the week that the altercation began at the mall when Singletary asked one of the six youths walking outside if he gangbanged. At that point, witnesses said, one boy swore and said, “Do you think we look like gangbangers?”

Friday, Baird reread testimony that after the shooting Williams yelled out the car window: “You don’t gangbang? Well, you do now!”

“He repeated it to the girls,” Baird said. “He was very proud of that statement. It shows his state of mind before and after the shooting.”

Singletary’s attorney, Phil Nameth, denied his client had any gang connections. He posted on a cork board next to the jury box a large, rectangular piece of paper on which he had written the word “gang” circled by a jagged line, suggesting a piece of a puzzle.

“That’s the four-letter word that has been introduced into the case, which, I would submit, is worse than the four-letter word beginning with an ‘F,’ ” he said. “The missing piece of the puzzle is any proof that my clients are involved in a gang.”

Nameth said testimony by a police gang expert during the trial and by teenage eyewitnesses never proved gang connections. Illustrating his point, he ripped the sign off the cork board, crumpled it and threw it into the trash.

Although both defense lawyers questioned the credibility of the girls’ testimony, Williams’ attorney, Drov Toister, led the attack. He said the girls’ arrest on murder conspiracy charges--only one of the four, the driver, now faces charges--scared them into falsifying their testimony.

“There is a motive to put them in the best possible light,” Toister said. “To shift the blame elsewhere, you put it on the person farthest from you, in terms of knowledge and familiarity.”

Toister also argued that Williams was not proven to be the man who fired the fatal shots. Singletary may have done the shooting, but was protected by the testimony of the girls because they knew him better, Toister said.

“If you’ve had an argument with somebody and they come driving up behind you, are you going to look into the car and try to focus on who is shooting?” Toister asked. “No, you’re going to try to get out of there with your life.”

Toister referred to evidence that Singletary had telephoned one of the girls from jail two days after the shooting.

“They had a chance to do some creative planning,” he said. “They talked it over amongst themselves and with Mr. Singletary. . . . They had to prepare. They had to have a story.”

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In contrast, Baird argued that the girls had been chastened by the “wrong place, wrong time” experience and therefore would not have a motive to get involved in a deeper plot.

“I don’t see how they could put themselves in a better light,” she said. “I’m sure it’s not something they will want to remember from high school, being booked for murder.”

Baird concluded by stressing evidence from the crime scene.

“I’ll give you that one or two shots, maybe he’s just trying to kill the guy that disrespected him,” she said. “But when you fire nine times, you’re intending to kill every person on that street.”