Suspect Denies Killing Officer

A 23-year-old gang member testified Monday that detectives coerced him through intimidation and grueling interrogation sessions into admitting that he fatally shot Los Angeles police officer Filbert Cuesta in 1998.

Testifying in Los Angeles Superior Court, Catarino Gonzalez said he did not kill the officer, that he did not have a gun the night Cuesta was shot, and that he was pressured into accepting a story that detectives fed to him.

According to that account, Gonzalez shot at Cuesta, a 26-year-old father of two, merely to scare him--not to kill him--because he had heard the officer was trying to send him to prison for a probation violation.

Gonzalez, at times appearing as if he were about to cry, testified that he believed he had to accept what police told him. He said he believed he had failed a polygraph test.

Wearing a big black shirt and baggy pants on his 5-foot-6 frame, Gonzalez said detectives repeatedly ignored his requests for an attorney.

Under questioning by his lawyer, Michael Artan, Gonzalez said he feared that if he did not tell officers what they wanted to hear, he would get beat up, or something else “bad” would happen to him.

Cuesta was shot shortly after midnight Aug. 9, 1998, while he and his partner, Richard Gabaldon, sat in their police cruiser in the 5300 block of Carlin Street. They were waiting for backup officers to help them disperse a wedding party attended by Gonzalez and other gang members. Cuesta, a four-year LAPD veteran, died the next day.

Gonzalez had spent 120 days in jail after Cuesta arrested him on a drug charge.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Darren Levine has argued that people at the party heard Gonzalez complain about the officer and boast that “I’m going to take out Cuesta.”

In police interrogations, Gonzalez allegedly said he fled when Cuesta’s partner returned fire and that he threw the gun into some trees. The gun was never found.

But Gonzalez said all those statements were lies in which he simply agreed to details that his interrogators said they already knew.

He said the Police Department’s polygraph examiner, Ervin Youngblood, at one point told him “things could get out of hand” if he didn’t cooperate, which Gonzalez interpreted as a threat.

“I thought he was going to . . . hit me or something,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez denied that he had a grudge against Cuesta. In fact, he said, they got along well.

He said he heard gunshots while at the party and fled over a back fence, as many others did.