Teen Gets 2 Life Terms for 1990 Gang Shootings

In an action clearly designed to send a message to gangs, Orange County Superior Court Judge William W. Bedsworth on Friday sentenced a Santa Ana teen-ager to two consecutive life sentences for a drive-by shooting that blinded one youth and partially blinded another.

“This case cries out for maximum imposition of sentence,” Bedsworth said, in pronouncing judgment on 19-year old Kawika Guibalt, one of three gang members convicted of attempted murder in the December, 1990, shooting.

The judge called the crime a “brutal, vicious, cowardly assault with a shotgun upon unsuspecting bystanders.”

David Tiscareno, then 17, and Robert Johnson Jr., then 16, were hit by shotgun fire as they were standing in a Santa Ana driveway. Tiscareno was blinded and Johnson lost sight in one eye.

According to Deputy Dist. Atty. Marc Rozenberg, who prosecuted the case, Guibalt will have to serve a minimum of 14 years before he can be considered for parole. In his sentence, Bedsworth ordered that Guibalt be housed with the California Youth Authority until he is 25. He will be housed in an adult prison thereafter.

Before the sentencing, David Tiscareno’s father asked for the maximum penalty.

His son, Joseph Tiscareno said tearfully, “was not a gang member,” merely a person who was “at the wrong place at the wrong time,” for which “he lost his eyesight for the rest of his life.”

Guibalt’s attorney, Alex J. Forgette, argued for a lesser sentence, partly because the triggerman, Michael Levine, was sentenced to the California Youth Authority until he is 25, since he was only 15 at the time of the shooting.

The third youth involved, Michael Anthony Nesbitt, is expected to be sentenced to 14 years, reduced in return for his testimony for the prosecution, according to Rozenberg.

Forgette argued that Guibalt’s conduct in the last 18 months “suggests that we have an individual that’s worth saving.”

But the judge, citing Guibalt’s juvenile record, which included armed robbery, his lack of remorse or acceptance of responsibility, and his role as the “instigator” of the shooting, rejected the plea.

Although he complimented the defense attorney for his efforts, Bedsworth said that comparing the defendants in the case was like comparing “a rattlesnake and a cobra.”

Thus, the judge said, “my conscience is not shocked” by the disproportionate sentences.

“The protection of society,” Bedsworth said, dictates that Guibalt go to prison “for a very long time.”

Guibalt’s family wept when the sentence was pronounced but declined comment.

After the sentencing, Joseph Tiscareno said he had wanted a biblical sentence, literally “an eye for an eye,” but that was “obviously unreasonable.”