The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 1

a -A. LARGEST CIRCULATION IN THE WEST, 1,036,911 DAILY, 1,226,132 SUNDAY VOL. XCIII 3f FOUR PARTS-PART ONE CC SATURDAY MORNING, MAY 18, 1974 78 PAGES Copyright 1974 Los Anseles Times DAILY 10c I'! i (ecoamtion Fire Destroys House; victims Burned beyond I 500 Law Officers Join in 2-Hour Battle in South LA. i 4 'V v' 4 -AX' 7 7 -4v inimaiwiiiiminii tn mi i i BY AL MARTINEZ and Times Staff Five hundred law officers stormed a suspected hideout of the terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army in South-Central Los Angeles Friday, and five occupants died in the battle. The house was destroyed in flames.

The furious gun fight began at p.m. and lasted almost two hours. Thousands of rounds of ammunition sprayed the air and at least seven canitsters of tear gas were fired. All five bodies were burned beyond recognition near the rear of the house and police were unable to pay whether they were members of the SLA. Two of the dead were known to be women.

Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi said that autopsies on all five of the dead were scheduled for 9 a.m. today. Immediate identification was impossible, he said, because of the charred condition of the bodies. The FBI was rushing medical and dental records to Los Angeles to aid in the identification. There were unconfirmed reports that two of the dead were Donald David DeFreeze the SLA's "Cinque," founder of the "army" and Camilla Hall, one of its members.

Flak-jacketed members of the Los Angeles Police Department, the FBI, the California Highway Patrol and the Sheriff's Department, acting on a tip, mounted the huge raid against the one-story stucco house at 1466 E. 54th St. Their attack came a day after three suspected members of the SLA were involved in a shootout at an lnglewood sporting goods store. It was the first appearance of the "army" in Los Angeles. Friday afternoon's battle was a scene from a war.

Automatic gunfire poured from the house and officers ducking be BULLETS POUR INTO policeman with' bullhorn runs ocross street toward spectators os fire rages in house on E. 54th St. 1 ROBERT KISTLER Writers hind cars, trees and power poles-returned the fire with deadly precision. Houses next door and across the street were riddled by bullets. A pall of tear gas choked police and newsmen alike.

The battle was carried live on television. No one was able to say exactly what caused the fire in the house, but officers believed that it was set by the tear gas canisters fired through the windows. A house and apartment building on either side of the besieged structure were gutted by flames. For awhile, those inside the embattled home held a hostage whom they apparently released about 30 minutes before the gunfight ended. She was identified as Christine Johnson, 35, and suffered puncture wounds in the back and a burned right forearm.

She was taken to California Hospital. Miss Johnson had run from the house, screaming, "They held me, they held me." Police quickly rushed her away during the height of the battle. The woman said she lived in the house, but there was at least one conflicting report. Mary Carr, 52, told officers her daughter, Minnie Lewis, 33, had allowed the five persons to spend the night there after they had offered to pay her $100. Mrs.

Carr said her daughter lived in the house, and that when the mother went to check on her Friday she saw a white woman with a pistol on lier hip. "1 went back to see what was going on," Mrs. Carr said. "A white lady had a belt on with a pistol. She slapped at her side and smiled up at me." Mrs.

Carr left the house and notified police. The army of officers moved in at 5:50 p.m. and shooting began almost immediately. Miss Johnson ran screaming from the house at 6:15. Please Turn to Page 22, Col.

1 HOME utes after the gunfire erupted when a black women staggered out of the sieged house and screamed that she had been a hostage. She identified herself as Christine Johnson. Around the corner and up a block, at E. 55th St. and Ascot five FBI agents crouched behind a brick wall, their revolvers held at the ready.

They and other agents and police were covering the rear of the house under siege. "Get down!" an agent shouted at two newsmen scurrying up. "When you hear a crack, that's a bullet coming at you." "I know," one of the newsmen replied. "I was on Okinawa." At 6:30 p.m., from this position at Ascot and 55th, black smoke began to billow up from the besieged bungalow. The shooting never ceased.

There was the pop-pop-pop of the lawmen's semiautomatic weapons, interrupted at times by staccatto bursts of machine gun fire. Please Turn to Page Col. 5 FEATURE INDEX ASTROLOGY. Part 1, Page 12. CHURCH XKWS.

Part 1, Pages 25-27. CLASSIFIED. Part 4, Pages 1-21. COMICS. Part 3, Page 8.

CROSSWORD. Part 4, Page 24. FILMS. Part 2, Pages 5-9. FINANCIAL.

Part 3, Pages 9-14. LKTTKRS TO THE TIMES. Part 2, Page 4. FjTROI'O LITAX XKWS. Part 2.

SPORTS. Part 3, Pages 1-7. TV-RADIO. Part 2, Pages 2, 3. VITALS, WEATHER.

Part 3, Page 11 0 mi. Round of Tear Gas Signaled Start of Assault by Police BY RICHARD WEST and JOHN MOSQUEDA Times Staff Writers ttiiiff HOUSE ABLAZE Los Angeles High Court Breaks With- Precedent a Sign of Politics? BY LINDA MATHEWS Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON A dispute over a stove, a refrigerator and a washing machine ballooned this week into a full-blown philosophical debate in the1. Supreme Court about a fundamental rule of jurisprudence called stare decisis. In translation, those Latin words mean, approximately, "to stand by what has been decided." In Anglo-American law, stare decisis is as basic a doctrine as you can find: everyone expects that judges will stand by settled precedent, and not decide a case differently today than they did yesterday. But this week a five-man Supreme Court majority seemed to forget stare decisis, for all practical purposes, they reversed a 1072 ruling that consumers must be notified and given the chance to contest the action before merchandise bought on credit can be repossessed.

So-abrupt and unexpected was this break with precedent that three dissenting justices charged the switch could be explained only by the change in the court's membership over the last two years. Evolving principles of law, the usual rationale when the high court overrules itself, had nothing to do with it, the dissenters said. Underlying this debate Avas the dissenters' fear that the majority ruling would create public contempt for the hicrh court and for the law itself. "A basic change in the law upon a ground no firmer than a change in our membership invites the popular misconception that this institution is little different from the two political branches of government," Justice Potter Stewart wrote in an opinion joined by Justices William 0. Douglas and Thurgood Marshall.

"It seems to me," Stewart added, "that unless we respect the constitutional decisions of this court, we can hardly expect that others will do so; Please Turn to Page 7, Col. 1 '1 -V .11 lllilalliilMlil neighbors to safety during battle. Times photos by Jack Gaunt Truce Effort tcrpret recent statements by Kissinger and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko as a guarantee of eventual Israeli withdrawal from all of the occupied Golan Heights: There is no need beyond that for any timetable, he declared. "If we allow negotiations to break down over a small hill or position, it means we do not really want peace," he said.

"The first step is the important one," Shoufi added. The Syrian attitude, as described by the Foreign Ministiy official, is 1 one of willingness to take that first step and determine then what develops. He said there are no difficulties concerning a U.N. buffer zone or the nature of the peace-keeping forces there preventing the two countries from concluding a pact. Shoufi said the Syrians are prepared, as a next step, to sit down at a table with the Israelis in Geneva or elsewhere in talks that should not rlease Turn to Page 15, Col.

1 iff 'if RUN FOR COVER Policeman Breakthrough BY WILLIAM J. COUGIIL1N Times Staff Writer DAMASCUS A high official in Syria's Foreign Ministry declared Friday that Syria is willing to depend on U.S.-Soviet guarantees of eventual Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territory in the Golan Heights without that agreement being included in a pact separating the combatant forces. His statement was regarded as a breakthrough in efforts to reach a cease-fire agreement between the two Middle East neighbors. It came as U.S. Secretary of State Henry A.

Kissinger prepared to return here from 'Jerusalem today at' the crucial point of his diplomatic shuttle mission between Syria and Israel. The Syrian official told the Los Angeles Times that the assault on the Maalot school in Israel had delayed but not disrupted efforts to conclude a disengagement agreement. "It would mean we are allowing Silence suddenly settled over the shabby neighborhood of Victorian-type nouses, stucco bungalows and small apartment houses in South Central Los Angeles Friday evening, Although half a block away, you felt you could hear the footsteps of the policeman who, wearing a flak jacket and carrying a tear-gas gun, glided along the 1400 block of E. 54th St. He dropped to one knee almost directly in front of the yellow stucco bungalow at 1466 and fired a tear-gas round through the front window.

Then he scrambled to his feet and ran for his life. As soon as he was out of the way, scores of policemen and FBI agents started pouring bullets into the house. That was the start of a gun battle which left five suspected members of the Symbionese Liberation Army dead, the house they were holed jtip in burned to its foundations and Che dwellings on both sides of it gutted. A crowd of about 200 persons gathered half a block away at 53rd St. and Complon began to cheer as the shooting opened up.

But their laughter turned to tears when, as more tear-gas shells were lobbed into the house, a big cloud of eye-searing gas was wafted into their midst. With shouts of anguish, they tamed and dashed across Compton Ave. into the Slauson Recreation Center where they fought each other to get into the rest rooms and wash the gas out of their eyes. The assaulting force held its fire for a moment at 6:15 p.m. 25 min wearing gas mask rushes two women Seen in Mideast the'extremists to decide for us," said llamoud Shoufi, head of the North American affairs desk at the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

The Syrians, Shoufi said, are willing to allow the critical issue of Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Syrian territory to await further peace talks elsewhere without insistence on a definite timetable. He said his country expects "an agreement to agree" to emerge from Kissinger's current peace mission. This echoed statements from the American party in Jerusalem that agreement was "very close." Syria, Shoufi said, is ready to in- THE WEATHER National Weather Service forecast: Partly cloudy today and Sunday. Highs both days, 65 to 72. High Friday, 68; low, 58.

Complete weather information and smoff report in Fart 3, rage 11..