Business Owner Reenacts Fatal Shooting of Teen

Jurors on Thursday watched as Edward Nishida Drake reenacted in a police video what happened that night, 15 months ago, when he grabbed his revolver, opened his shop door and from seven feet away fatally shot a 17-year-old boy he knew.

The video was taped just hours after Drake shot Leonard Anthony Coppola, a motorcycle mechanic, who was trying to retrieve a trailer from a lot in the rear of Drake’s automotive repair shop on Oct. 10, 1997.

Coppola was killed as he and a friend were making final preparations for a weekend camping and motorcycle riding trip. That required them to pick up a trailer from a padlocked automotive lot shared by Drake and the man who gave the pair permission to borrow it.

Drake faces a second-degree murder charge and the possibility of serving 25 years to life in prison.

Drake narrated the video as Simi Valley Police Det. William Daniels walked Drake through the crime scene and asked him questions.

The video began by showing Drake lying on a cot under a sleeping bag in his shop, where he said he sometimes slept after his separation from his wife.

“I heard a tapping at the window,” Drake began. “It was real loud, not like someone trying to get out, but like someone trying to break the glass.”

The video followed Drake as he walked stiffly in the dark down the hall of his BMW and Mercedes-Benz repair business.

“I saw the headlights, but I didn’t see anyone at that point,” he said.

In the video, he walked into his dark office, then reached down and grabbed his .44-caliber magnum revolver before flipping the office lights on.

“Something was rattling at the gate,” Drake said in the video. “He [Coppola] undid the deadbolt and . . . did this, he kicked it right open.”

Drake said on the video that he yelled “Freeze!” Drake told Daniels, who is seen on the video, that the figure he saw at the rear gate had squatted, and held his hands slightly up. The detective then got into the position Coppola would have been in when shot. Drake said he then shot Coppola.

“Then a kid came out, and I recognized it was the . . . kid from the motorcycle shop,” Drake said on the video, referring to Coppola’s friend.

As the video played, some jurors covered their mouths with their hands or handkerchiefs. Coppola’s father put his arm around the shoulders of his wife, who kept her eyes averted.

Drake sat with his head sagging to one side as he watched the taped reenactment.

The victim was a friend of the 52-year-old defendant. Earlier that afternoon, Drake said, he had given Coppola and his camping buddy hamburger meat and steaks for their trip.

That friend, Gary Eisenhauer, now 19, also testified Thursday.

Eisenhauer grew up on Chambers Street in Simi Valley, down the street from Drake’s shop. He said he had known Drake since he was 8 or 9 years old.

Eisenhauer recounted how he and Coppola had hatched a last-minute plan to take some “quads” into the wilderness to go riding. He told of how he and Coppola had turned up at the motorcycle shop where Eisenhauer worked about 9 p.m. to pick up a trailer to pull the vehicles.

When the pair arrived, Eisenhauer said, he received a message on his pager from his girlfriend and went to call her.

Coppola then moved his red Ford Ranger in front of the gate, Eisenhauer testified.

When Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Calvert asked Eisenhauer to identify a photo of the truck, Eisenhauer’s composure broke.

“I don’t want to look at that,” he said, turning away.

As he was talking on the phone, Eisenhauer said, he heard the boom from Drake’s gunshot.

“I dropped the phone and ran out to see,” he said. He said he saw Coppola lying on the ground.

“I thought he was being like a little kid, and he was playing like he was dead,” Eisenhauer testified. “I looked down and he was shot. I looked up and there was Ed, standing in the doorway.”

Eisenhauer said he later asked Drake what was going through his head when he shot Coppola. After rereading his testimony from a preliminary hearing, he testified Thursday that Drake told him “the gun accidentally went off” when he “tripped over a bubble in the floor.”

As questioning continued, Eisenhauer grew increasingly hostile to both the defense and prosecuting attorneys, until Judge Ken W. Riley had to stop the trial and admonish him.

Eisenhauer’s testimony is scheduled to resume this morning. Jurors this afternoon are scheduled to travel to Drake’s automotive shop to walk through the shooting scene.

The trial is expected to last into next week.