The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office is charging two men in connection with a car-to-car shooting Dec. 3 — an 18-year-old they allege was the shooter and an alleged accomplice accused of helping hide the crimes from law enforcement officers
Prosecutors have charged Angel Eduardo Ocampo, 18, of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder for his alleged role in a noninjury shooting on Highway 14 in the early morning hours.
Ocampo’s co-defendant in the case, Manuel Marquez, 44, is accused of felony accessory after the fact and felony possession of a firearm, citing two previous felony convictions.
Ocampo’s special allegations include the use of a handgun in connection with the crime.
The two are scheduled to have a preliminary hearing next month expected to take about four hours. At a preliminary hearing, the evidence is presented to a judge who decides whether there’s enough for trial.
California Highway Patrol officers investigated the allegations, which were reported sometime after 3:30 a.m., in the southbound lanes of Highway 14, near Agua Dulce Canyon Road.
A silver Toyota Corolla fired multiple rounds at the victim, leaving a number of bullet holes
“The victim and witnesses reported the shooting to be from an automatic weapon, as the shots rang out in very fast succession,” according to the CHP officer’s report in court records. “Responding units began to scour the area, looking to see if the suspect vehicle had exited the freeway and was hiding out.”
Officers patrolled the area and found a 2005 silver sedan with very dark window tinting, matching the witnesses’ descriptions, parked in the northwestern parking lot of the Kohl’s Department Store at Golden Valley Road. Its plates were traced back to Acton.
CHP officers then began to search the area for video evidence of the car that matched the witnesses’ description and found surveillance footage that showed the same Corolla at a nearby gas station, according to a report of their investigation.
In a request for a search warrant of the vehicle, officers describe seeing a series of what they describe as furtive movements on the surveillance footage from the gas station that they suspect shows them passing something to each other discreetly.
Major Crimes Unit officers ultimately located Ocampo near some apartments in Canyon Country, where he was arrested two days after the shooting, according to officers in a court request to search the car. Officers reported finding multiple spent shell casings from an unknown caliber gun “strewn about suspect vehicle No. 1.”
Ocampo was initially given $1.2 million bail, which was revoked Jan. 29. Marquez’s bail was set at $75,000. He does not appear to be in custody as of the publication of this story based on Sheriff’s Department custody records available online.
Their preliminary hearing is scheduled to take four hours on May 21, according to a minute order from their previous hearing.
