A well-liked guy with no enemies, Leonard Johnson had no reason to think he was in danger as he stood in front of his friend's Fontana area home shortly after 1 a.m. June 15.

So when a white compact car made a U-turn on Redwood Avenue, cut its headlights and slowly rolled up to the single-story, stucco house, Johnson walked over when its occupants called to him.

It was a fatal mistake.

The 21-year-old Ontario man was hit once in the chest by a .380-caliber bullet fired from inside the car, San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators said.

Johnson ran south on Redwood Avenue for nearly a block, yelling "oh no," before laying himself gently down in the street, witnesses told detectives. He never got up.

"We believe he was mistaken for someone else," sheriff's Sgt. Bobby Dean said. "They were looking for somebody and they shot the wrong person."

Johnson had inadvertently walked into the middle of a violent, months-long feud between the family of the friend he was visiting and a group of neighborhood street toughs bent on revenge over a fistfight.

On Aug. 5, Isaac Camposano, 17, Ruben Ramirez, 19, Thomas Perez, 18, and Michael Sandoval, 18, appeared in Fontana court for a pre-trial hearing on murder charges stemming from Johnson's killing.

All four also face charges of shooting into another house in the hours before the killing. They are scheduled to appear again on Aug. 23.

Because of the severity of the crime, authorities have decided to try Camposano as an adult, prosecutors said.

Phone calls seeking comment from the defendants' attorneys were not returned.

Family members were shocked that Johnson, who planned to attend Chaffey College this fall, instead was gunned down.

"He was the type of person who always worked, ever since he was very young," said his mother, Renee Barnes, who raised Johnson and his three siblings by herself. "He was the type of person that, when we didn't have any money, he would go out and wash windows and cut yards."

It might have been Johnson's friendly nature that got him killed, friends said.

"Leonard was just an outgoing person," said Aziki Pearson, 23, Johnson's longtime friend who lived in the Redwood Avenue home. "He would just talk to anybody. He didn't have anything to do with this."

Tension and fear have been a staple in the Pearson home since early November 1998, when the boyfriend of Aziki's sister, Natasha, 25, got into a fistfight with Camposano. Neither the Pearsons nor investigators would identify the boyfriend out of concern for his safety.

Natasha Pearson told police that her boyfriend punched Camposano in self-defense after being repeatedly challenged over his alleged gang ties.

Later that day, a large group of Camposano's friends gathered in front of the Pearson home demanding revenge.

"There were like 30 of them," Aziki Pearson said. "They had crowbars and knives and (stuff). They were saying, `I'm a shoot your house up. I'm a shoot your kids and everything.' "

The group dispersed after Aziki's mother arrived and talked to them and calmed them down.

Several weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day, two neighborhood men spotted Natasha's boyfriend as he stepped into the front yard of the home, Pearson family members said. They chased him back inside.

The men trapped the boyfriend, Natasha Pearson and her 1-year-old daughter in a back room of the otherwise empty house, Natasha Pearson said.

"They were trying to get in the room," she said. "My boyfriend held the door closed with his foot and told me to take the baby out the window."

As she prepared to climb outside, she heard the men run out through the front door. They stole a bicycle from the yard, she said.

The incident was not reported to police until after Johnson's shooting.

Camposano's 19-year-old brother, Moses Camposano, has been charged with first-degree residential burglary in connection with an incident that occurred around Thanksgiving 1998, county prosecutors said.

He also has been charged with one count of assault with a firearm and one count of witness intimidation in connection with a July 6 incident.

Neither sheriff's officials nor county prosecutors would provide details of those crimes.

Deputies have not yet arrested Moses Camposano, who is believed to be in the Fontana area, Dean said.

In the months leading up to Johnson's shooting, the Pearson family lived in fear of the people who cruised slowly past their house, they said. Sometimes the cars would stop, then speed away.

The night of the killing, Johnson was in the front yard of the Pearson home, talking to Natasha's boyfriend after returning from a double-date with Aziki.

The boyfriend took cover behind a nearby truck when the shot was fired. When the car sped away, the boyfriend ran to where Johnson had laid down, Natasha Pearson said.

"His eyes were open but he was already dead," she said he told her.

An hour later, a ringing phone awoke Johnson's mother at her Ontario apartment.

"All they had to say was, `Is this Leonard's mother?' and I knew," Barnes said.

She has relied on faith to help her deal with the senseless death and daily memories of her son's face.

"There's not one single day that goes by that I don't think about him," Barnes said. "He always had a smile. Always."

Aldrin Brown can be reached at abrown@pe.com or (909) 890-3544.

Published 8/15/1999