Details come out in court

In the moments after a shotgun blast wounded a 15-year-old girl in the chest in a Costa Mesa neighborhood in 2008, it was chaos, police said in court Friday.

As the assailant ran back to an awaiting getaway car, witnesses said that a crowd, which had gathered outside during the attack, scattered. One Costa Mesa officer testified that he arrived on scene and found one of the victim’s friends kneeling by the teenage girl’s side. The officer said that he covered her wounds with a towel to soak up the blood. The girl survived, and her alleged attackers were arrested in a little more than a week.

Friday marked the first day of testimony in the preliminary hearing for Salvador Hilario Burciaga Jr., 20, Cesar Aziel Pedroza, 19, Nestor Lopez, 17, and Oscar Ramos, 16, to determine whether they should stand trial on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy, each carrying gang-related enhancements. Lopez and Ramos are being charged as adults.

Burciaga, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and black-rimmed glasses, is the accused shooter. Since his arrest he has shaved his head, revealing two old English-style letters tattooed on the back of his head that correspond with the gang he’s alleged to be affiliated with. The men smiled at each other as they entered the courtroom, and about 18 of their friends and relatives looked on from the audience.

In court Friday, officers testified that the call came out over the radio about 6:13 p.m. July 28, 2008, reporting that there was a shooting on Shalimar Drive in Westside Costa Mesa. The Shalimar neighborhood has a long history of gang violence, so much so that years ago police put concrete barricades on each end of the street, leaving residents with one entrance and exit.

Officers’ testimony Friday did little to explain how officers determined that Burciaga and the other men were the girl’s attackers.

Witnesses said that day that the shooter was a young, skinny Latino male with light skin. Police said he was wearing dark pants, a white shirt with a brown jacket but had his face covered with a blue bandanna and his head covered with a blue hat under a hood.

According to prosecutors, the men drove onto Shalimar Drive from Wallace Avenue and turned around, stopping. Burciaga got out, jogged over to the group down the street, shot the girl, then ran back into the car and sped off, prosecutors contend.

When he ran back to the car, prosecutors claim, Burciaga’s hat fell off.

The hat read “World’s Greatest Grandpa” on the front, police testified.

Defense attorneys challenged little of the testimony, focusing instead on if there were conflicting statements about what the alleged shooter looked like, where the getaway car stopped, and how police figured that four people were involved. The day after the shooting, police initially suspected that two men were involved.

Prosecutors said details on how the four defendants were identified will come out Monday, when gang detectives who handled the investigation are expected to testify.