Judge Rejects Lesser Charge in Riot Attack : Courts: Two friends will be tried for attempted murder in the near-fatal attack on evangelist Wallace Tope, who remains in a coma. The preacher had attempted to stop looting during the April unrest.

PASADENA — A Los Angeles Municipal Court judge has ordered two friends to stand trial on attempted murder charges for the near-fatal beating of a Pasadena evangelist who tried to stop looting at a Hollywood shopping center during the April riots.

After a daylong preliminary hearing last week, Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell rejected defense arguments that Leonard Sosa, 23, and Fidel Ortiz, 20, did not intend to kill evangelist Wallace Tope, and that the charges should be reduced.

The two, both of Los Angeles, will be arraigned June 24.

Tope was at a shopping area at Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard preaching and distributing religious literature when Sosa and Ortiz--who police said had been stealing from a Sav-on drug store--attacked him, said Deputy Dist. Atty. David Augh.

According to one security guard at the scene, the two men kicked Tope for three to four minutes while the preacher lay helpless on the ground. Another security guard testified that the beating was “very brief”--lasting perhaps only a few seconds. The guards were not asked why they didn’t try to help Tope.

Tope, 52, has been in a coma since the April 30 attack, and doctors say that he will probably be in a “persistent vegetative state” as long as he lives.

If they are convicted of attempted murder, Sosa and Ortiz face a maximum sentence of life in prison, with the possibility of parole.

But during the preliminary hearing, defense attorneys Marvin L. Part and Harvey E. Byron argued that the two should be tried on a lesser charge of assault with great bodily injury, which would carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

The lawyers argued that Sosa and Ortiz had not planned the attack, nor had they intended to injure Tope so severely. They also disputed the account of the security guard who said the attack lasted several minutes.

“What he did was obviously the wrong thing,” Part said, referring to Sosa. “But I think you have to stretch to believe that he had the intent to murder Mr. Tope.”

Byron added, “It happened in a matter of seconds.”

After his arrest, Ortiz told Los Angeles Police Detective Michael McDonagh that he was carrying stolen merchandise out of the Sav-on when Tope confronted him and told him “he was going to hell and to repent,” McDonagh testified.

Ortiz told police that he hit Tope when the preacher raised his hands as if to hit him. Once he was hit, Tope rushed away but bumped into Sosa, McDonagh said.

Sosa told police he knocked Tope to the ground, kicked him once in the shoulder, then walked away, McDonagh said.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Kennedy-Powell ordered the two men held without bail, prompting Tope’s younger brother, Dennis, to stand up and shout, “Yes! Good!

“I want these guys tried, convicted and put in prison,” said Dennis Tope, an assistant principal at Mojave High School in Kern County. “If they didn’t want to listen to my brother, that was fine, but there was no reason for them to do this. It was a barbarous act, and they need to be punished for it.”

A friend writes about Wallace Tope, above. Commentary, J3