Local News in Brief : Carlsbad

A former athlete from San Dieguito High School was convicted Thursday of misdemeanor battery in the late-night beating of a Palomar College student on April 27.

A Vista Municipal Court jury convicted Lawrence Jeffery Penacho, 19, in the attack on Craig Beveridge near the parking lot of Vons supermarket in La Costa.

The jury deadlocked, 9-3, in favor of convicting Penacho on a separate misdemeanor battery count involving Beveridge’s girlfriend.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly said Penacho will be retried on that count, as well as charges involving a May 30 beating at a party in Olivenhain. Charges from an alleged beating outside an Encinitas pizza parlor in November, 1986, have been dropped because Penacho was a juvenile at the time.

Penacho, who was a star wrestler, is the second former athlete from San Dieguito High convicted in Municipal Court of charges stemming from a string of North County beatings. Co-defendant Erik Heipt, 19, like Penacho a June graduate, has been sentenced to 15 days in jail.

Five current or former athletes at the school have pleaded guilty in Juvenile Court in the beatings.

Judge Sheridan Reed on Thursday sentenced one of the five, a 16-year-old junior from La Costa, to perform 100 hours of community service and pay his victim’s medical bills. A 17-year-old senior from Solana Beach has been ordered to perform 200 hours of community service and pay medical bills.

In both cases, a plea from the beating victim to send his attacker to Juvenile Hall was rejected.