Plea Deal in MCA Shootings : Courts: Ex-worker admits to firing three dozen rounds at corporate headquarters, wounding seven people. He is likely to get a 10-year term.

A disgruntled former employee pleaded guilty Wednesday to shooting into the MCA world headquarters in Universal City last April, firing three dozen rounds and injuring seven workers. With his trial scheduled to start Wednesday, John Brian Jarvis, 58, struck a last-minute deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to seven counts of assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of discharging a firearm into an occupied building.

Jarvis, who originally pleaded not guilty to 16 felony charges, had faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. When he is sentenced March 8, he is expected to receive a 10-year prison sentence under terms of the plea agreement.

“He engaged in a practice, which he should have known would put people at risk for their lives so he will spend 10 years in prison,” Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn said.

Conn described the agreement as fair, noting that Jarvis lacked the intent to kill.

“He simply wanted to retaliate against MCA for some perceived injury against him over the years,” Conn said.

Stephen Galindo, the public defender representing Jarvis, also said the agreement was equitable.

“He was facing quite a bit of time, and even though we felt we had some legal defenses, my experience is that oftentimes jurors tend to vote with their emotions rather than their logic,” Galindo said.

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Galindo, however, maintained that the entertainment conglomerate had mistreated Jarvis.

“It’s clear that MCA did treat him very unfairly by causing him to be blacklisted,” Galindo said. “He was unable to work for several years, which culminated with the death of his mother causing him to snap and freak out.”

An MCA representative could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but company officials had previously said the allegations were untrue.

Jarvis positioned himself on Bluffside Drive and peppered MCA’s headquarters and a neighboring Bank of America building with three dozen rounds from a high-powered 7-millimeter rifle. He then calmly surrendered to police.

The bullets wounded two women. Five other people were injured by flying shards of glass and metal.

“I did what I had to do,” Jarvis said in an interview in June.

Jarvis later told police that MCA, where he had once worked as a movie studio driver, had blackballed him, causing his chronic unemployment.