CAT CRUELTY CASE DROPPED AGAINST TEEN.

Byline: Donna Huffaker Staff Writer

Charges were dismissed Tuesday against the Glendale teen-ager wrongly accused of beating kittens, but he still spent most of a sixth day in jail because of paperwork gridlock.

After inquiries from the Daily News on Monday, police acknowledged that Eric Lopez, 18, could not have been the youth who clubbed a box of 7-week-old kittens on July 15, and had been mistakenly identified in a photo lineup. Lopez was in Los Angeles County Jail from July 13 to July 20 on three charges of vandalism, jail officials said.

So a hearing was held Tuesday at the request of police and the District Attorney's Office to dismiss the single felony count of animal cruelty against Lopez.

But he was still behind bars until 9:49 p.m. Tuesday because of paperwork - to the outrage of his family and civil libertarians.

``After an order from the judge dismissing the charge, the jail should be able to verify pretty quickly whether they have any reason to hold him,'' said Mary Broderick, executive director of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.

``If there is nothing else, he should be released immediately,'' she said. ``There's no excuse to hold someone without additional charges.''

Neither Lopez nor his court-appointed attorney attended the afternoon proceeding, when Deputy District Attorney Lonnie Felker told the court Lopez had been misidentified. Felker dropped the charge and Court Commissioner Daniel Calabro signed Lopez's release order.

``Identifying a suspect from pictures can be a problem,'' Felker said outside court. ``The witness made a mistake. The case will be refiled if the right guy is picked up.''

Despite the misidentification, it is very clear a crime occurred, Felker said.

A 15-year-old witness told Glendale police she was walking to her summer school class about 10 a.m. July 15, when she heard a scream from the 1300 block of East Harvard Street, a police report says. She saw three teen-age boys, two of them laughing and beating a box of four kittens as a little girl screamed, ``Stop killing my kitties!.''

As the teens continued pounding the box with a 4-foot-long stick, the box split and an apparently dead kitten fell to the ground, the witness told police. The child scooped up the animal and ran down the street crying, the 15-year-old said.

The teen-agers ran off and the witness took the kittens to Glendale High School where she recounted the events for school resource officer Sue Shine.

Shine went to the 1300 block of East Harvard and found a rope tied to the tree and blood on the ground, Sgt. Rick Young said Tuesday. It does not appear the witness fabricated or embellished her story, he said.

``She was shaken. Officer Shine saw the kittens and said they appeared traumatized. The witness's description of events was succinct,'' Young said. ``You do enough interviews and you can tell when someone's making things up. It doesn't appear the witness made this up.''

According to Young, the girl looked at possible suspect pictures July 22. Lopez and a 17-year-old boy were arrested July 29. It is unclear whether charges have been filed against the minor, but Young said the witness recognized his tattoos.

Police have stepped up their investigation in light of the mix-up, Young said, adding that they must find the child and the teens who ran away. There was also an adult who screamed at the teens to stop, he said, according to the 15-year-old witness. Officers would like to question the adult, too.

``We're asking all those `why' questions right now,'' he said.

``Why'' is also a question Lopez's mother and father are asking.

Earlier Tuesday at his Chestnut Street home, Domingo Lopez readied for work and wondered when his son would be released. A maintenance worker at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lopez said he believes police picked up his son because he's been involved with a gang.

``The way they treated him is not right,'' Domingo Lopez said.

Eric, who is on probation, has been arrested several times for graffiti, Lopez said, but his son still deserves to be treated with respect.

``I try to do the best I can to get him out of here. I want for him to have a chance, for him to have a normal life,'' he said, adding he has tried to persuade his son to hang with a different group.

One of the things that Young said baffled investigators is why neither Eric nor his parents told officials earlier that Eric was in jail on July 15. Silvia Lopez, Eric's mother, said she assumed the attorney would tell police. Domingo said Glendale police are familiar enough with his son - from frequent arrests - that they would have known he wasn't in Glendale on July 15.

Regardless of how the mistake happened, Domingo Lopez said someone needs to explain to him why his son was still in jail all day Tuesday.

Lopez's court-appointed private attorney, Madeline Chang, called the judicial system slow.

Deputy Elsa Avila, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, said it takes a little while for the jail to update information. Often inmates who have been released are held because of other pending cases. When she checked on Lopez's case, she was told it was necessary to wait until the computers were updated.

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Photo: Daniel Lopez, 11, holds a recent photo of his brother, Eric, far right in picture, taken at a cousin's quinceanera.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News