Family Comes to Grips With Father’s Needless Death : Tragedy: Wife is convinced that her husband was only defending himself when he was shoved to the ground by a teen-ager.

Patricia Haag painfully shows the 7-year-old photograph of the Little League team that pictures her husband standing proudly behind the kids he helped coach that season.

See that little towheaded kid in the back row--yeah, there in the corner , she asks. He’s the boy who killed my husband.

Chances are that the boy, now 18, never recognized the man whom he knocked to the ground a couple of months ago, killing him when his head slammed against the asphalt, in front of the man’s own home in Escondido.

And chances are that 54-year-old airline pilot Myron (Mike) Haag never recognized Derreck Lawton, that kid he helped coach back in ’85.

On Friday, more than two months after that confrontation, the district attorney’s office ruled that Haag’s death was a “legally excusable” homicide because “it was an accidental killing committed during sudden combat or in response to a sudden and sufficient provocation.”

It was not Lawton’s first violent confrontation with adults. Two years ago, he was suspended from Escondido High School after a scuffle with a teacher.

Even Lawton’s companions that night say that Haag tried to bring calm to the confrontation with their friend.

Here was a man who would walk, arm-in-arm, with his son after football practice. He’s the fellow who, with his wife of 29 years, inflated hundreds of helium balloons before the big footballgames, to distribute to other parents. When flying, he would talk unabashedly in the cockpit about his love for his wife, his children, his church, and--of course--youth sports.

Haag had landed his American Airlines 757 back at Lindbergh Field from Dallas about 5:30 p.m. on March 28, this last day of his life and, as always, Pat Haag was there to meet him. The couple returned to the ranch home where they have lived for 20 years, on San Pasqual Valley Road as it leads tothe San Diego Wild Animal Park through the eastern fringe of Escondido.

With the house to themselves that night, Mike and Pat Haag caught up on each other’s lives over steak and fries and salad.

Haag headed for bed around 10:30 while Pat watched television. Minutes later she heard her husband outside. He must betrying to shoo away some kids who like to party up the nearby hill and who stopped for some reason in front of their home, she assumed.

Suddenly, loud voices cut through the air, growing angrier and peppered with such profanity that Pat Haag can’t bear to repeat it. She stepped out the front door and heard her husband’s own voice, stating firmly, “That’s right, this is private property!”

She walked down the short driveway and heard her husband’s plea, this time with a more nervous edge to it: “Get this guy out of my face.” She turned the corner past the shrubbery, and yelled out in bluff, “The police are on their way!”

“As soon as I said that,” Pat Haag said, “there was movement towards Mike, and he fell backwards. I yelled, ‘Get out of here, you guys, the police are coming!’ ”

Three figures high-tailed it in a pickup truck down the easement road and onto the highway.

Mike? Mike! My God, Mike was all but dead, lying on the asphalt with blood pouring from his head. The punch in the face didn’t kill him. But he fell back hard, and, when his head hit the pavement. . . .

We’ll keep him alive long enough to harvest his organs, the doctors at the hospital said.

The friends poured out for his funeral, from youth sports and Emmanuel Faith Community Church. American Airlines’ chief pilot in San Diego said he’d never seen such a gathering of his colleagues in uniform, even at formal company meetings.

Then came the wondering: What would come of Derreck Lawton, the big burly kid with the pony-tailed, dishwater-blond hair?

Yeah, we were partying up there on Teepee Hill, Lawton told sheriff’s investigators as his own attorney sat at his side. The three of us stopped in front of the guy’s house so I could urinate, Lawton said. The man came out and got in my face, Lawton said.

“Why are you staring at me?” Lawton said he asked Haag, according to transcripts of his interrogation, obtained by The Times. “What are you, a faggot?” Lawton asked, telling police later he was just giving Haag “a hard time.”

Haag hit him and knocked him to one knee, Lawton said. But the teen-ager picked himself up quickly and swung at Haag. Lawton said he missed, and Haag just stood there. So Lawton punched at Haag again, connecting squarely on his face and sending him backward, flat onto his back.

Lawton said he and his two buddies were chased off by Pat Haag, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. Fortified by their beer drinking, the trio took off for a rural area west of Escondido known as Harmony Grove.

“It’s supposed to be some haunted place,” Lawton explained to the cops.

Lawton said they engaged in cow-tipping--a late-night rural sport of trying to body-slam sleeping cows off their feet, to be rewarded by the “moo” of the fallen, startled animal.

And yeah, he admitted, they stole a church bell from the religious camp out there. It’s in the back of my car, sir.

Derreck Lawton said he didn’t learn until that Monday morning, at school, that Mike Haag, Coach Haag, Vietnam helicopter pilot Marine Capt. Haag, American Airlines Pilot Haag, was dead.

Kids at the San Pasqual High School campus were already talking about Haag’s death. His son, Mike, is a popular student at school, a baseball player, a football player, and news of his dad’s death spread quickly.

Lawton said that, when he heard the news, he asked his teacher for a pass to the counselor’s office but instead took off for home.

“I was like too nervous,” he told investigators. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

He got an attorney and turned himself in to authorities. By 9:15 that night, the Sheriff’s Department issued a press release that said the three suspects--Lawton, a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old, had turned themselves in to investigators for questioning. The press release noted, “No arrests have been made as a result of these interivews,” and relayed the following:

“An altercation ensued between Derreck Lawton and Mr. Haag. Mr. Haag struck Derreck Lawton in the face as he approached within inches. Derreck Lawton retaliated by striking Mr. Haag in the face. Mr. Haag fell to the ground.”

Pat Haag was seized by anger. Her husband was killed in self-defense? There have been no arrests?

Pat Haag says her husband was murdered. She doesn’t know if her husband struck a blow first--she didn’t see the whole thing, she admits. But, if he did, it was in his self defense, in the face of an angry young man who was threatening him.

“If he went out, looking for a fight, he could have taken a weapon, or our dog,” Pat Haag said. “If they got boisterous towards him, it would have been his nature to try to calm them down.

“But he was threatened, accosted, struck and killed. In five minutes he was dead. Not in some bar, but in his front yard.”

Lawton admitted to authorities that he was trespassing.

“I stood there, in front of him . . . and he hit me and then . . . I tried to hit him and, because he was standing there . . . I didn’t want him to beat me up, you know. He was standing there . . . and then I tried to hit him and I missed and then I, then I like cocked, and I hit him, and he fell like flat on his back. . ., “ Lawton told investigators, according to the transcripts.

I’m the one that did it, he said. I’ll probably pay my whole life.

Lawton’s two companions were independently interviewed by investigators about the incident. They generally corroborated Lawton’s version, and Dist. Atty. Ed Miller said on Friday that there was no evidence that the trio planned their stories.

The 15-year-old said Haag “wasn’t . . . very vulgar about it” when he ordered the trio off his property.

The teen-ager said that Haag struck Lawton first, and then was “walking backwards” away from Lawton when “Derreck just walked up and punched him.”

Bradley Fischer, the 20-year-old whose truck they were driving that night, echoed the 15-year-old’s observation that Haag wasn’t confrontational when he walked out the door.

“The guy was very nice, and then Derreck was screaming at him,” he said.

At that point, Fischer said, Haag tried to defuse the situation, suggesting to the companions,” ’Why don’t you guys calm your friend down.’ ”

Haag struck Lawton, Fischer said, after Lawton walked up to Haag and, using an expletive, asked what Haag was going to do about it. “And that’s when the man hit him.”

Lawton “got up and started running at the guy. At that time the guy was back pedaling to try and move, and that’s when Derreck hit him,” according to transcripts of the investigators’ interview.

The Sheriff’s Department first sent the case to the district attorney’s office in Vista. Prosecutors there passed it along to the district attorney’s special operations unit, the same cadre of attorneys who investigate police shootings and other cases where the question is not whether there was a homicide, but whether it was excusable or criminal.

On Friday, after a review by Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig Rooten, Miller ruled that Lawton could not be held criminally responsible for Haag’s death for five reasons:

Lawton was not the original aggressor since, according to witnesses, Haag threw the first punch; Lawton didn’t take undue or unfair advantage over Haag; Lawton didn’t use a dangerous or deadly weapon; the killing wasn’t done in a cruel or unusual manner, and the death wasn’t the result of gross negligence.

“I just don’t understand where the district attorney is coming from,” Patricia Haag said Friday. “It’s insane. You cannot have violent action and irresponsible behavior, and go away unpunished.”

Patricia Haag said she and her attorney were considering taking civil action against the three.

Lawton’s attorney, Dan Cronin, said before Friday’s announcement that the family would not comment on the case and was “upset by the publicity” surrounding it. “He won’t get a fair shake in the community, because the wealth of public opinion is against him.”

Indeed, people who know Lawton say they’re not surprised by his involvement.

Mike Dolan, a coach at San Pasqual High School, said Lawton is relatively well-known on campus because of his rough demeanor. He’s a wanna-be athlete who has been rejected for school teams because of his lack of self-discpline and poor sportsmanship, Dolan said.

“He’s violent at times,” Dolan said of Lawton.

Another teacher who had Lawton as a student for just one day at Escondido High School, which he once attended, said Lawton acted violently with him as well, two years ago.

Lawton darted out of his classroom one day and scuffled several times with the teacher as he resisted being brought back, said the teacher, who asked for anonymity.

“Derreck got in my face, pointed his finger in my chest,” and added an expletive to describe the teacher, according to the educator. “I said, ‘Derreck, you can’t do that. I can either grab you by the arm or we can walk back cooperatively. He kept pushing me with his finger and tried to spring away.”

The teacher said he recaptured Lawton and got him back into the classroom--only to have him dart out again. During the incident, the teacher said, Lawton was spewing vulgarities at other students and teachers.

Sally Daner, coordinator of special education for the Escondido Union High School District, said Lawton was suspended for five days for his conduct, and that a police report for assault was taken--but that charges were later dropped for reasons she could not remember.

Dolan, the San Pasqual coach, said he will remember Mike Haag for all the hours he stood along the sidelines during football practice--never meddling, never interfering, “but just being supportive of the guys.”

“He was always there, putting his arm around his son. You’d see them, after practice, walking off arm-in-arm--and that’s something you don’t see very often at the high school level.”

American Airlines First Officer Dave Pepper, who served as Haag’s co-pilot twice in March, said he never saw Haag angry. “I’ve seen pilots get mad when they’re stuck at the gate, or haven’t had all their cargo delivered, or can’t get the doors shut, or can’t get maintenance out quick enough. But Mike would never get upset.”

The incident has left Haag’s neighbors shaking their heads, too.

John Nagorski, who lives farther up the same easement driveway that leads to the Haag home, said the two households have had to tolerate boisterous parties atop Teepee for years.

Mike Haag would tell teen-agers who stopped in front of his house to leave, but was never pushy about it, Nagorski said.

“My own kids are thoroughly amazed that anyone would think Mike would throw a blow (at Lawton). It’s hard to believe, and I don’t.”

Chris Meredith is the minister of the Harmony Grove Spiritualist camp in Harmony Grove, and it was his bell--hanging on the outside of the camp’s healing chapel--that was stolen that night.

Meredith said he remembers confronting the trio while he was walking his German shepherd. About 20 minutes later, he heard the bell clanging, apparently as it was ripped off its hinges.

A week or so later, he said, sheriff’s deputies returned the bell. “And I’ll remember the comment the detective said to me. He said, ‘Well, you know, these aren’t really bad boys.’

“Well, what constitutes bad boys?”