Ex-Marine Gets 2 Life Terms for Robbery Deaths : Sentencing: Attorney says Eric John Wick did not shoot the 3 victims in coin shop<i> .</i> Officials take that into account and make parole a possibility.

A former Tustin Marine, the son of an FBI agent, was sentenced Friday to at least 40 years in prison for his part in a brutal armed robbery that left two people dead and a third victim wounded.

Eric John Wick, 20, received two concurrent life sentences for his part in the 1989 robbery of the Newport Coin Exchange. Because a gun was used in the robbery and there was an additional attempted murder conviction, Wick will not be eligible for parole until he has served about 30 years of the sentence, court and prison officials said.

However, the officials said, Wick will not begin serving time on the murder sentence until he completes another 12-year sentence on related counts of attempted murder, robbery, burglary and conspiracy.

Sentencing for Wick’s co-defendant, Thomas Reed Merrill, 26, was postponed until Sept. 20, pending completion of probation and background reports.

Merrill and Wick were convicted July 1 of first-degree murder under special circumstances, which made them both eligible for sentences of life without parole. Because of their relatively young age and lack of prior criminal records, there was speculation that either or both might not receive the maximum sentence.

The pair, best friends when they were stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station at Tustin two years ago, were convicted of robbing the coin dealership on MacArthur Boulevard on March 14, 1989.

Killed in the robbery were Clyde Oatts, 45, and Rene King, 38, the wife of the owner, William D. King, 39, who suffered permanent brain damage and blindness in one eye as a result of his wounds. Oatts and William King had returned from a late-afternoon lunch and drinks just before the shootings occurred.

Oatts left three small children. King, who sat in court Friday with several adult family members, has two young children.

Wick’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Tim P. Severin, asked Trial Commissioner Richard M. Aronson--who presided over the trial--to consider Wick “as an individual” and to bear in mind evidence presented at the trial that Merrill did all the shooting.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson, called the shooting “a heinous crime,” but said he recognized the “disparate” role played by the two defendants.

Robinson said that Wick had “played a lesser role than Mr. Merrill” in the crime.

Commissioner Aronson agreed, saying it was clear to him that it was Merrill who “essentially executed these people.”

Aronson called the crime “so stupid and senseless,” “incomprehensible” and “indescribable,” indelibly marking the lives of five small children, among others. He wondered aloud if it was “some sort of Marine macho fantasy.”

The commissioner, a former public defender who heard the case by agreement of both the defense and prosecution, said Wick’s “moral culpability is enormous,” compounded by the fact that he grew up in a loving, middle-class home.

“I wish you could have experienced the anguish in Rene King’s mind when she realized she would never see her children again,” Aronson told Wick.

While Aronson told Wick “you may spend all of your life in prison,” he will at least be able to maintain contact with his loved ones, something his victims cannot do.

Outside the courtroom, William King said he had hoped that Wick would be sentenced to life without parole.

“I don’t think he should ever be out on the street again,” King said. “I will never get my wife back. I will never get my eye back. . . . I don’t think it’s right that he’s in a position where he can possibly get out.”