Freddie Ramone Rodriguez guilty only of simple battery for participating in a fight between Los Primos and 18th Street gang members

Clarke County jury has acquitted a man of charges he participated in a gang-related drive-by shooting that wounded a gang member and two innocent bystanders five years ago.Jurors found 29-year-old Freddie Ramone Rodriguez guilty only of simple battery for participating in a fight between Los Primos and 18th Street gang members that led to the shooting two weeks later.After deliberating for part of two days, jurors on Friday found Rodriguez not guilty on eight counts of aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated battery and one count of participating in a criminal street gang.Superior Court Chief Judge Lawton Stephens sentenced Rodriguez to 12 months in prison, but gave him credit for 16 months he served in jail.Prosecutors couldn't connect Rodriguez to the shooting or the street gang because key witnesses lacked credibility, according to defense attorney David Crowe."They told their stories many, many times by the time we got to court, and the stories changed, sometimes very dramatically," Crowe said.Prosecutors alleged Rodriguez belonged to Los Primos, a local branch of Sur 13, a national Mexican street gang.They accused him of riding with fellow gang members the night of Jan. 30, 2004, when a caravan of vehicles fired as many as 50 bullets at 18th Street members standing in front of a duplex on Wynter Court off North Avenue.One 18th Street member was wounded, as were two men who were eating dinner in an adjacent apartment.An 18th Street member testified Rodriguez was not one of the shooters, though he told police in a videotaped interview he was.A fellow gang member told jurors Rodriguez took part in the drive-by, but he wasn't a sympathetic witness, according to Crowe.That witness, Jose German Ramirez, is serving a 15-year prison sentence for a pair of drive-by shootings that targeted Los Primos members in June 2007. Athens-Clarke police officers shot and killed one of Ramirez's fellow gang members when he threatened them with a gun.He testified that before immigrating from El Salvador, he shot seven people.Prosecutors showed jurors dozens of photographs of alleged gang activity, but Rodriguez was in only two of them."They were very innocuous - just guys sitting around who looked like they might have been grilling out or something," Crowe said.While prosecutors couldn't connect Rodriguez to the drive-by, another jury in December 2005 convicted Miguel Hidalgo-Lopez for the shooting and belonging to Los Primos.A judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison on multiple assault and battery charges, and added 10 years for violating the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism Prevention Act of 1998.Three other Los Primos members indicted for the shooting remain at large.