Videotape Holds Clues to Killing of 2 Outside Store : Crime: Security camera captures argument between two men just before fatal shooting outside convenience mart.

Police played a security camera videotape for the news media Monday in the hope that it would lead to the killer of two men outside a small convenience store near Downtown Los Angeles last week.

The tape--shot from a fixed camera over the door of the San Juan Meat Market at 1248 W. Temple St.--does not show the slayings, but it does show part of the argument that preceded the shooting deaths of Jesus Reyes, 39, and Boris Villacorta, 49, on Thursday.

It also shows the storekeeper’s 9-year-old son covering his ears as shots ring out and Reyes falls backward through the door of the shop, mortally wounded.

“From the way my brother approached him, I think my brother may have known the man who shot him,” Ivan Corpeno, Villacorta’s half brother, said after viewing the tape. “But I have no idea what (the argument) was about, and I have no idea who that man was.”

Lt. Marlin (Doc) Warkentin, commander of the LAPD’s Rampart Division detective bureau, said three suspects, one of whom was wearing a long-sleeve white shirt, entered the store about 7:45 p.m.

The tape shows the three men standing near the counter as Reyes and Villacorta walk in a few minutes later.

Almost immediately, an animated dispute begins between Villacorta and the man in the white shirt.

According to the storekeeper, the only word he understood during the argument was Michocan, the name of a state in Mexico. Neither Reyes nor Villacorta is from Michocan.

As the tape continues to roll, Villacorta and the man in the white shirt appear to resolve their argument. The two men shake hands and Villacorta offers the man in the white shirt a cigarette, which the man accepts.

“Offering him a cigarette was a friendly gesture,” Corpeno said.

As soon as the man in the white shirt accepts the cigarette, he and his two associates walk out the door and disappear from the camera’s view. Moments later, Reyes and Villacorta follow them out.

The storekeeper said that when the argument resumed on the sidewalk outside, he stepped outside the store in an effort to calm things down.

“I told them: ‘Don’t fight, amigos, ‘ “ the storekeeper said. “But it didn’t do any good.”

The tape shows the storekeeper re-entering the store and walking distractedly back and forth. He and his young son gaze anxiously out the door as the argument escalates.

According to witnesses, the man in the white shirt produced a gun and opened fire at close range, Warkentin said. On the video, the boy covers his ears and Reyes falls backward through the open door.

Warkentin said the gunman fired one more shot that struck Villacorta in the abdomen before he and his two associates jumped into a red car--possibly a late-model Ford Mustang or Ford Escort--and fled east on Temple.

“What I need from the community is: Who is this individual with the long-sleeve white shirt, and who are his friends?” Warkentin said.

Warkentin said Reyes was pronounced dead at the scene, the victim of multiple gunshot wounds. Villacorta was taken to County-USC Medical Center, where he died during surgery.

Irma de la Torre , Reyes’ wife and the mother of his two children, said her husband and Villacorta had been friends for years.

She wept softly as she faced the cameras.

“The children have been asking for their father,” she said. “I haven’t told them yet.”