Oxnard Man Sentenced in 2 Drive-By Deaths : Courts: Carlos Vargas will serve 13 to 17 years for his role in the Saticoy shootings. Two other defendants got life terms.

An Oxnard teen-ager received a sentence of 26 years to life in prison on Friday for his role last year in the drive-by slayings of two Saticoy men--deaths which the sentencing judge called “high up there in the list of tragedies” in Ventura County.

Carlos Vargas, 18, will serve 13 to 17 years in prison, depending on sentencing litigation moving through the federal court system, the prosecutor said after the sentencing hearing in Ventura County Superior Court. Vargas will be initially incarcerated in a California Youth Authority facility.

Vargas is the last of four defendants to be sentenced in the case. Two of the other three received life terms. Vargas, however, had been expected to get a lighter sentence because he had cooperated with law enforcement officers in convicting the other three.

Judge Allan L. Steele said he had “been thinking about this sentencing for obviously a long period of time.” He said he wanted to send a message that those who cooperate with the law will be given some consideration.

“The young men who were killed were very, very fine members of the community . . . good students . . . well-liked,” the judge said.

Still, he said, there should be some mitigation. “People should understand that if they are cooperative with the court, there will be recognition for their cooperativeness,” Steele told the sentencing hearing. Steele said that Vargas “cooperated in every respect.”

“I know it sounds bizarre to say it,” Steele said, but Vargas “rendered a service” by pleading guilty and then testifying against the other defendants.

Before Vargas was sentenced, Claudio Ramirez, the father of one of the victims, made an emotional appeal to the judge. “What they did was a very cruel thing,” Ramirez said through an interpreter. “I don’t want any more revenge. I don’t want any more blood to be spilled. All I want is justice.”

Javier Ramirez, 19, and Rolando Martinez, 20, were killed in the April 7, 1991, drive-by shooting in Cabrillo Village. Two other men were wounded. According to statements by witnesses, Vargas helped buy the murder weapon--a .22-caliber rifle--and drove the car from which the shots were fired.

The attack, according to witnesses, was meant to settle old scores against a Cabrillo Village gang. But the victims were not gang members.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris described Vargas as a youth with “a passive personality” who tended “to go along with his peers.” He said Vargas probably would have gone to college and become an accountant if he had not got involved in the slayings.

Willard P. Wiksell, Vargas’ defense attorney, told the court that he could not defend “this totally senseless crime. What happened was terrible.”

But Wiksell said Vargas, who lived in a tough Oxnard neighborhood, managed to do well in school. The killings, he said, were “totally out of character for him.”

Previously sentenced in the case were:

* Edward (Tony) Throop of Ventura. Throop was 17 when he fired the fatal shots. He was sentenced in March to two concurrent terms of life in prison without parole. He became the first juvenile in California to receive a stiff sentence under a 1990 state ballot initiative that made juveniles 16 and older eligible for no-parole life sentences.

* Vincent Medrano, 17, of Ventura. Medrano was sentenced last month to four consecutive life terms, guaranteeing that he will spend at least 40 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole.

* Joseph Scholle of El Rio. Scholle, 15 at the time of the slayings, was committed last December to the California Youth Authority until he turns 25, the maximum sentence for a 15-year-old.