People v. Joseph H.

Opinion

TAKEI, J.

*

Joseph H. appeals from the sustaining of a petition alleging that he is a minor coming within the provisions of Welfare and

[630]

Institutions Code section 602 by virtue of his violation of Vehicle Code section 20002, subdivision (a). Appellant contends that denial of his motion for acquittal pursuant to Penal Code section 1118 was erroneous.

On February 2, 1979, at about 6:30 p.m., a woman residing at 77 Sea Cliff Avenue, Daly City, heard a loud crash outside her home. She ran to look for the source of the noise and saw three damaged cars. She saw a boy emerge from the driver’s door of the white car which was the only occupied car. She watched him run down an otherwise empty street and she hollered “Somebody stop him.” She did not see his face and she was unable to identify him but she did recognize the car from which he had emerged. It belonged to the son of a woman named Rose who lived some seven to eight doors down the street from 77 Sea Cliff Avenue, the direction in which the boy had fled.

Officer Pamela Hiar of the Daly City Police Department heard the loud crash but she could not see the source of the sound. She did see a boy, whom she identified as appellant, running down Sea Cliff Avenue in her direction and she saw him run into a house located at 41 Sea Cliff Avenue. She knocked at the door of that house and asked the young girl who answered to ask the boy who had just run into the house to come to the front door. Appellant came to the door and when she asked him why he ran into the house he said “I was always in the house. I didn’t run in the house, I was here.”

Hiar asked appellant to accompany her as she walked up the street and appellant complied. As they were leaving the house, appellant pointed to the driveway and asked “Where’s Rose’s car?” Hiar asked him what he meant and he said that the lady who lived there had her car parked in the driveway. They went to the scene of the accident and appellant mentioned that one of the cars was the one he had been talking about, Rose’s car. That was the car from which the witness had seen the boy running. At the hearing in juvenile court, a woman who lived at 81 Sea Cliff Avenue testified that the parked cars damaged in the accident belonged to her and her son and that no one had come to her to leave a name and address.