Gang Member Gets 4 Life Terms for Deaths During Venice Warfare

A Santa Monica Superior Court judge Monday sentenced a 28-year-old gang member to four life prison terms--two of them without parole--for a 1994 drive-by shooting that killed two high school students and wounded two others at the height of a Venice gang war.

Judge Steven Suzukawa granted a new trial for a co-defendant who had been convicted in December. The judge agreed with the co-defendant’s contention that the jury failed to find sufficient evidence.

Shauntee Rodgers was sent to prison for the June 1994 shooting that occurred at 11:30 a.m. across the street from Venice High School.

The victims--four seniors from Dorsey High School--had just gotten out of a graduation rehearsal and had gone to Venice to shop for a pager at a store across the street from the school, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Keri Modder.

Although the attack occurred during a prolonged gang war between black and Latino groups in Venice’s Oakwood district, prosecutors said it was a case of mistaken identity and the victims were not gang members.

“It’s a very appropriate sentence,” said Modder. “These were innocent kids who would have graduated from high school, but they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Eyewitnesses told police how Rodgers and co-defendant Kwamin Stewart, 22, slowly drove down Venice Boulevard in a brown van, then did a U-turn when they saw the Dorsey students’ red Hyundai.

The van, driven by Rodgers, stopped alongside the car and Stewart leaned out from the passenger’s seat and raked the vehicle with gunfire from a handgun and shotgun, the witnesses told police.

The Hyundai’s driver, Jose Tizcareno, 17, of Venice and Jose Alvarez, 18, of Los Angeles, who was sitting behind Tizcareno, were killed.

Although several high school students watched the drama unfold, only two would testify in court, Modder said. Both were able to identify Rodgers as the driver of the van, but the only one who identified Stewart was blind in one eye and sitting on the front steps of the high school 320 feet away, Modder said.

In a December trial, both men were found guilty of two counts of homicide and two counts of attempted murder. Before sentencing, however, Stewart’s attorney, Curt Livesay, argued that the eyewitness evidence against his client was insufficient. Suzukawa agreed, ordering a retrial to begin in August.

The prosecution’s key witness against Rodgers was a woman who was at a Venice house where he tried to dump the van key and his clothes after the slayings. She later gave the van key to the police, who were able to match it to an abandoned van in a nearby alley.