Attorneys Sum Up in Slaying of Teenager

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Calvert stood before the jury and pointed to a photograph of a cot with a phone next to it.

“The tragedy in this case is summarized in this one photo,” Calvert said, launching dramatically into closing arguments in the trial of Edward Nishida Drake, a Simi Valley auto mechanic who fatally shot a 17-year-old acquaintance.

“Next to the cot where the defendant slept is a phone--a phone that he could have picked up and called three numbers,” Calvert said, alluding to 911. “Had he dialed those three numbers, Leonard Coppola would be alive today.”

Calvert paused.

“But he didn’t. And that set in motion a chain of events that led to the death of a young man.”

It began about 9 p.m. Oct. 10, 1997, when 52-year-old Drake, who was sleeping in the rear of his BMW-Mercedes-Benz repair shop on Chambers Lane in Simi Valley, heard a tapping on the shop window, he later said.

Thinking it was a burglar, Drake--who had been robbed several times in the past--crept through the darkness and grabbed a loaded .44-caliber magnum revolver.

He kicked open the door and saw a figure defense attorneys have described as standing with his hands clasped before him in a combat stance. Drake fired at the figure who stood less than 8 feet away behind the gate.

That figure was Coppola, who was struggling to open a combination lock so he and a friend could retrieve a trailer from a neighboring business that shares a lot with Drake’s car-repair business.

The case seems particularly tragic because Drake knew and liked both Coppola and his friend Gary Eisenhauer. He had even given the pair steaks and hamburger meat for their weekend outing only a few hours before.

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

Prosecutor Calvert urged the jury to replay the video, made just hours after the shooting, in which Drake reenacted what happened that night for police investigators.

Calvert said the video would show there was plenty of light that night for Drake to see and recognize Coppola.

Calvert said the video would show that Drake never mentioned tripping on the linoleum before he fired the gun by accident--something he later told others.

And the prosecutor said the video would show a man with no remorse for the act he had just committed.

“He does not have the demeanor of someone who had just killed someone,” Calvert said. “Wouldn’t a reasonable person be in tears, distraught, thinking, ‘What have I done?’ ”

Calvert concluded by asking the jury to convict Drake of second-degree murder.

Defense attorney Stephen M. Hogg dismissed Calvert’s analysis of the events as an example of “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

He passionately challenged virtually every statement Calvert had made--except the irrefutable fact that Drake shot and killed Coppola.

Hogg, too, urged the jury to watch the video.

But he said the same video would show how dark it really was that night--how difficult it was to see.

He said the video would show Drake not as a man who was without remorse, but as a man who was in profound shock, moving like a zombie as he tried to cooperate with the police.

Finally, Hogg argued that just because Drake did not mention on the video that he had tripped did not mean it had not happened.

People often forget things when they are in shock and remember them later, Hogg said.

Passionately, the defense attorney argued that Drake has suffered enough. He urged the jury to acquit Drake of all charges.

“Send this man home,” he said. “He’s not guilty. He killed that boy. He will never--not ever--get over it. . . . Send him home.”

As the lawyers presented their arguments, Coppola’s mother sat with a tissue clenched in her fist, tears running down her face. Her husband sat with his arm draped over her shoulders.

The case went to the jury at the end of the day Wednesday, after Calvert completed his rebuttal.