Judge Deliberates in Playa del Rey Shooting Incident : Crime: A verdict is expected Wednesday amid allegations of racism in the 1988 wounding of a black fisherman.

It was to have been a pleasant summer Sunday of fishing for Terence Goudeau and his three cousins.

The young men drove from South-Central Los Angeles to Playa del Rey on a sunny June day in 1988, to try their luck at Ballona Creek, where they had fished many times before.

But by day’s end, the four young black men had been subjected to racial slurs and Goudeau, 18, had been severely wounded by a gunshot fired in a fit of racial hatred by a man he had never met, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Martin told a Torrance Superior Court judge Thursday.

In his closing argument to Judge John P. Shook at the end of a six-week non-jury trial, Martin asked that Mark Shane Lashley be convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and civil rights violations.

Goudeau, who was hospitalized for two days and must restrict his physical activity, “will have the shards and pieces of the bullet” in his body “to remind him of the prejudice that he was shown,” said Martin. “ . . . These things don’t go away.”

Defense attorney Lloyd Riley painted a strikingly different picture--one of Lashley as a frightened victim of Goudeau and his “street-tough” cousins.

Lashley fired the shot only to protect his own cousin, Christopher Flores, said Riley.

“Christopher Flores was under attack,” Riley argued. “He was outnumbered 3-to-1. Three knives. And three hateful men, intent on killing him.”

Shook said he will announce a verdict in the case Wednesday. If convicted, Lashley faces up to 10 1/2 years in state prison.

Lashley, 29, who is free on $200,000 bail, sat still, with his head bowed, through four hours of closing arguments. The former Hughes Aircraft research scientist moved to Sacramento after the shooting.

Goudeau and his three cousins testified that they had just arrived at the boulder-lined shore of the Ballona Creek flood control channel on June 26 when Lashley and Flores, who are white, began to regale them with racial insults from Lashley’s apartment overlooking the creek.

Lashley first asked if the group was fishing for “black fish” and later yelled racial slurs and told the young men to “get back to Harlem,” Goudeau testified.

The three cousins--brothers Dennis, Kelvin and Trenton Wilson--told essentially the same story. The brothers were 23, 21 and 12 years old, respectively, at the time of the shooting.

Goudeau testified that Lashley threatened to send “his boys” down to fight the “biggest and darkest” member of the fishing party, a reference to the overweight Trenton.

Prosecutor Martin said that Lashley, Flores and David Brockett, a friend of Flores, had spent the entire weekend drinking and partying. The three were drunk the morning of the shooting, Martin said.

According to the black youths, Flores staggered down to confront them and when he saw the small knife Goudeau had been using to cut bait, he said: “You’ve got a knife, I’ll show you a knife!”

As Flores retreated to the apartment building’s carport, Lashley appeared on his balcony with the rifle and squinted at the black youths through the scope, they testified.

Goudeau said that the rifle appeared to be aimed at Trenton and that he had run to protect his young cousin.

A single shot ripped through Goudeau’s shoulder and into his chest, where it bruised a lung and broke a rib, before lodging in several pieces next to his spinal cord. Goudeau, now 20, testified that the fragments remain in his body and that he is under doctor’s orders not to over-exert himself.

Dennis and Kelvin Wilson said they dove into the creek for safety, and Trenton ran.

Lorraine McDonald, a neighbor, testified that after the shooting, Flores returned with a large knife and stood, screaming, over the bleeding Goudeau. McDonald said that Flores only backed off after she yelled at him to get away.

In his rebuttal argument Thursday, Riley said that Flores had made an initial “joke” to the fishermen about catching black fish, but that any other racial comments must have come from the apartment below Lashley’s.

Riley said it was Goudeau who was responsible for the escalation in the conflict, because he responded with racial slurs of his own and threatened Flores with a knife.

“Terence Goudeau is a hateful person,” Riley said, “with no discipline and no restraint.”

Lashley testified that he had been preparing for some extra work at the office that Sunday, and periodically walking onto his balcony to enjoy the view, when he saw Flores surrounded by the three black youths.

First Goudeau, and then two of the Wilsons, lunged at Flores with their knives, Lashley testified. He said that he ran to the bedroom, where a friend kept a loaded .22, and returned to the balcony.

Lashley said that he aimed only to “wing” Goudeau in the shoulder, to frighten off the attackers.

Riley conceded that his client made a mistake by fleeing and driving to his parents’s house in Sacramento, stopping along the way to hide the rifle in a storm drain along Interstate 5. It was never found.

But Lashley fled only because he was disoriented by fear and stress, Riley said.

Martin dismissed that idea. “He did wrong,” Martin said. “And because he knew he did wrong, he fled the scene.”

“There was no reason why these people should have been harassed,” said Martin, “should have been cursed at, should have been disturbed. There was no provocation. . . . We have no other motive in this case for the shooting of Terence Goudeau, other than racial hatred.”