Site of Bell-Jeff Games Moved Amid Fear of Gang Violence

Fear of gang-related violence prompted officials at Bell-Jeff and El Segundo highs to change the location of a girls’ softball game and a boys’ baseball game between the schools.

Bell-Jeff Athletic Director Jim Couch said that Wednesday’s softball game, scheduled for Olive Park in Burbank, was moved to El Segundo and a Friday night baseball game at Northwest Park in Burbank will be played in the afternoon at Recreation Park in El Segundo.

The Bell-Jeff baseball team, which lost, 10-1, to El Segundo in Wednesday night’s game, will be the home team Friday. No incidents were reported in Wednesday’s game, which was scheduled for Recreation Park before the shooting.

School officials relocated the games in response to a Feb. 16 shooting in which Aurello Perales, 17, who police say was a gang member, was killed and a 21-year-old man was wounded during a high-speed chase through the South Bay. The chase began after an altercation between El Segundo and Burbank youths in the parking lot of an El Segundo convenience store. Both victims were from Burbank.

Jeffrey Dobrovolny, 17, of El Segundo, has been charged in the case. Dobrovolny is not an El Segundo student but El Segundo students were involved in the chase, police said.

Both of the shooting victims were not Bell-Jeff students but concern about possible retaliation was the primary reason for the relocation of the games, Bell-Jeff Principal Mary Ellen Rausch said.

Rausch said she was aware of the shooting but that it was Burbank police Detective Eric Rosoff who initially alerted her to the possibility of a retaliation.

“I thought about having a lot of security at the game, but he told us that any El Segundo student might be a target,” Rausch said. “We thought about playing during the afternoon and during classes and I went through literally hundreds of phone calls before we moved the game over there.”

This is not the first time that El Segundo has changed the location of athletic events because of the Feb. 16 shooting.

The sites of two Southern Section playoff games, involving the boys’ basketball and girls’ soccer teams, were switched to out-of-town venues the week after the incident.

Staff writer Rob Fernas contributed to this story.