Defendant Declines to Testify in Youth’s Death

Calling only one witness, an attorney on Monday rested his defense of Edward Nishida Drake, who is charged with shooting a 17-year-old Simi Valley youth to death.

Attorney Stephen M. Hogg said he will call one witness briefly Wednesday before closing arguments and jury instructions begin. Drake is charged with second-degree murder and could face 25 years to life in jail in connection with the death of Leonard Anthony Coppola.

Drake, 52, decided not to take the stand in his own defense Monday. The only defense witness Hogg called was a Simi Valley Police Department crime scene investigator whom prosecutors quizzed last week.

Hogg contends that Drake shot his friend Coppola because, in the darkness of that night 15 months ago, he mistook the young man for an armed burglar.

Drake awoke that night to the sound of a tapping on his shop window. That noise was Coppola, attempting to open a combination padlock so he and a friend could retrieve a trailer from behind Drake’s Merecedes-Benz repair business.

Convinced that he saw Coppola crouched with his hands clasped in front of him in a combat stance, Drake fired a single shot from his .44-caliber magnum revolver, hitting Coppola in the face, his lawyer has said.

In the weeklong trial, prosecution witnesses contending that Drake had been drinking earlier that evening and should have been able to see Coppola in the light outside his shop. The defense, meanwhile, argued that things happened so quickly that Drake either jumped back or tripped, winding up on the ground after the shooting, unsure whether he had fired at someone or had been fired upon.