Slain Officer’s Son Attends Opening of Murder Trial

The 10-year-old son of a Los Angeles police officer buried his head in his grandfather’s chest Tuesday as he listened in court to a prosecutor describe how his father and another man were shot to death Thanksgiving weekend in 1998.

Officer Brian Brown, 27, was trying to capture two men who had just fatally shot 18-year-old Gerardo Sernas, when one of them jumped out of a car at the Fox Hills Mall in Culver City and shot the policeman.

That man was shot to death at the scene by police. On Tuesday afternoon, 10-year-old Dylon Brown attended the trial for opening statements in the case against the car’s driver, Jaime “Alex” Mares, 23, of Inglewood. Mares could receive the death penalty if convicted in the murders of Brown and Sernas.

“You will hear [that] Officer Brown didn’t have a chance, because his seat belt was still on, his gun in the holster,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Danette Meyers told jurors in a courtroom filled with members of the two victims’ families. “One shot to the head killed Officer Brian Brown.”

Oscar Zatarain, the man shot to death by police in the Nov. 29, 1998, confrontation, was the alleged triggerman. But by state law, Mares would be just as culpable if convicted and could be sentenced to death for the special circumstance of murdering an on-duty peace officer.

Brown, who was raising his son as a single parent, served in Somalia as a Marine, earning a Purple Heart. At a Parker Center memorial service shortly after the Fox Hills shooting, Dylon, then 7, told a hushed crowd that he loved his father and would miss him deeply.

In court Tuesday, Meyers said the tragedy began after Mares and Zatarain, both members of an Inglewood street gang, set out to get revenge against rival Culver City gang members. The Culver City gang had shot and wounded one of the Inglewood gang members the night before outside Rocky’s, a local bar.

The prosecutor said the two ambushed Sernas and another man walking along Centinela Avenue. The second victim, Noble Hernandez, escaped without harm.

Shortly after the shooting, Brown and his partner, Francisco Dominguez, began trailing Mares and Zatarain.

Mares stopped the car at the Fox Hills Mall, Meyers said, and Zatarain jumped out and shot Brown.

After Zatarain was killed in an exchange of gunfire, Mares ran off before stealing a taxi and heading toward Los Angeles International Airport, police say.

After he crashed near an LAX terminal, police officers shot Mares several times, blinding him in one eye.

Mares’ attorney, Marcia A. Morrissey, urged jurors to keep an open mind. She said her client is not the callous man that prosecutors allege he is. Rather, she said, he too was a victim of Zatarain.

She said Zatarain duped Mares into taking him and an unidentified second man, who has not been charged, for a ride that night.

She said Zatarain and the other man are the ones who fired at Sernas and Hernandez. The other man, who prosecutors contend does not exist, ran away, but Zatarain jumped back into the car, Morrissey said. She said that Mares urged Zatarain to give up, but instead he pointed an assault rifle at Mares’ head and forced him to drive.

“He is nervous. He’s banging on the dashboard. He’s out of control,” Morrissey said of Zatarain.

She said her client kept running after the Fox Hills shootings because he was afraid police would shoot him too.

Last year, Mares’ attorneys, Victor Sherman and Morrissey, unsuccessfully challenged their client’s indictment, claiming it was unfair because Latinos were under-represented in the grand jury system.

Morrissey, however, said she is satisfied with the diversity of the jury for the trial itself, which is expected to last several weeks. Three of the 12 jurors are Latinos.