Youth Guilty of Murder in Woman’s Death : Crime: Edel Gonzalez, 18, of Westminster is likely to face life imprisonment for his role in a carjacking attempt that turned fatal.

A Westminster teen-ager was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder in the 1991 shooting death of a teacher’s aide who refused to let reputed gang members hijack her car.

The conviction all but assures that Edel Gonzalez, who turns 18 today, will become one of the youngest defendants in the county to be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole.

An Orange County Superior Court jury, deliberating about six hours after two weeks of testimony, decided that Gonzalez’s role in the death of Janet L. Bicknell, 49, of Westminster amounted to that of killer, although he was not the triggerman.

Gonzalez was also convicted of attempted robbery, conspiracy to commit an assault with a firearm and violating the state Street Terrorism Act for participating in gang activity. The jury further ruled that Gonzalez “acted with reckless indifference to human life” in the commission of the attempted robbery--a special-circumstance charge that qualifies him for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Gonzalez is scheduled to be sentenced April 26. Although the verdict, in effect, requires the life term without parole, the judge could set aside the special-circumstance finding and give him a lighter sentence. Attorneys said judges rarely do that, however.

“It was a tough decision for the jury to make, but it was a good and fair one,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John S. Anderson, the prosecutor.

Gonzalez was the first of five defendants to go to trial for the murder, which shocked county residents and sparked the formation of a multi-agency gang suppression unit in Westminster.

Anderson said Gonzalez and other members of a Santa Ana gang planned to steal Bicknell’s car to use in a drive-by shooting targeting a rival gang that had spray-painted graffiti in their territory.

But the Santa Ana gang’s plan went awry when they tried to steal Bicknell’s late-model Toyota near Westminster’s Bowling Green Park. Anderson said Gonzalez initiated the failed robbery attempt when he stepped in front of her car to stop it, then tried to open the driver’s-side door.

When Bicknell tried to drive away, another gang member shot her in the head with a .44-caliber pistol. The attackers referred to it as “The Joker Gun,” Anderson said.

After the shooting, the youths fled, then stopped at a nearby convenience store to cover the rival gang’s graffiti with their own slogans. Five young men, including Gonzalez, were arrested a few minutes later.

So far, Christopher F. Martinez, 20, and a 14-year-old defendant have agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the case. The trials of Gonzalez’s 22-year-old brother, Antonio, and Enrique Segoviano, 19, the alleged triggerman, are scheduled for next month.

In an interview with The Times five days after the shooting, Segoviano admitted that he killed Bicknell but insisted that her death was a mistake.

“The bullet just went off,” he said in a jailhouse interview.

Although Gonzalez was not the shooter, conviction under the state’s felony murder rule makes him just as culpable, Anderson said. The rule states that someone can be held liable for murder if a death occurs during the commission of certain felonies.

During the closing arguments in Gonzalez’s trial, his defense attorney, Dennis McNerney, conceded that his client was guilty of murder but argued that Gonzalez should be spared from a life sentence without parole because he was not as culpable as Segoviano.

After the verdict Thursday, McNerney said he was “very upset” with the jury’s decision and indicated that he would appeal the conviction.