Paradise Lost : Despite 5-1 Record, Westlake Players Are Haunted by Shooting

Football Coach Jim Benkert shoves his hands in the front pocket of his pullover jacket and squints through the diminishing sunlight that drenches the Westlake High practice field.

“They’re all good kids,” he says.

As if on cue, a football tumbles across the hard-packed dirt toward Benkert and his guest. Running after it is one of the Warriors, mouth guard between molars and helmet buckled up.

The visitor stoops and tosses the ball to the player, who says, “Thank you, sir,” and sprints back to the huddle.

Benkert smiles and nods. “They’re all like that. This is paradise if you’re a kid. It’s a great place to go to school.”

Particularly if you’re associated with Westlake football this fall. The team is 5-1 and third in The Times’ area poll. In his sixth year as head coach, Benkert has a program of dedicated and disciplined players and construction on a gleaming, 4,000-seat stadium on campus is under way.

He also has two players on his roster who have learned that even a town known for serene prosperity is occasionally rocked by real-world violence, to a point that one player’s family plans to move out of the state once their son finishes high school.

David Behling and Scott Smith, seniors and good friends, suffered gunshot wounds in a Feb. 3 fracas at North Ranch Park in Thousand Oaks. The two had driven to the park with former football teammate Curtis Simmons, who intended to use his fists to settle a dispute with schoolmate James Lee.

“No one was expecting guns to be there,” said Behling, a reserve defensive lineman. “If you’re in L.A. or the San Fernando Valley you have to watch out for that. We know what’s going on and we’re not naive, but we didn’t expect it here.”

A crowd of 40 or more students--only five or six of whom were football players, Smith said--gathered at the park for the planned altercation. When Lee and five carloads of his supporters arrived and the fight began, Behling and Smith saw Simmons outnumbered and surrounded by assailants.

Running toward the struggle, Behling and Smith heard gunshots and turned to retreat. Smith was shot in the back of the right shoulder and kept running; Behling was shot in the back of the head and immediately collapsed.

“I couldn’t feel my head but my body felt like it was on fire,” Behling said. “I was in shock. The first thing I thought of was that my parents were going to be mad because we were supposed to go to Mammoth that weekend.”

Smith was treated and released at Westlake Medical Center that night, but Behling underwent a number of procedures to locate and remove the bullet in his head. He was hospitalized for five days.

Two Westlake students, Lee and John Yi, were arrested within a day of the incident for their roles in injuring Smith and Behling. Two more juveniles, Oubansack (Andy) Sonethanouphet of Brea and William Huang from Rowland Heights, were arrested and charged.

In April, all four were ordered to stand trial as adult co-defendants on a variety of charges. However, Lee, a 16-year-old Thousand Oaks resident, is believed to have fled to Taiwan to avoid prosecution after his parents posted $5,000 bail to free him from juvenile custody. Charges against Sonethanouphet were dropped after a Ventura County judge ruled that police obtained his confession illegally. Trial dates for Yi and Huang have been set for this winter.

Smith, a 5-11, 190-pound linebacker, was lifting weights three weeks after the shooting and said football contact has caused pain in his shoulder only four or five times this season.

For the 6-1, 200-pound Behling, rehabilitation took longer. He missed a month of school, and after leaving the hospital and regaining his strength, underwent frequent brain scans. Some days he suffered numerous severe headaches. Still, by the end of the academic year he was able to compete in two late-season track meets and has had no medical limitations this season.

Now, halfway through their senior seasons, the physical ramifications are few for both players, yet the emotional consequences linger as they and their families try to put the incident behind them.

“I think about (the shooting) a lot, but when I look back it seems like a dream,” Behling said. “All of a sudden I will be sitting there . . . and think how lucky I am to be alive.”

David’s mother, Kathy Behling, said her son now avoids places where other students congregate and gets nervous when cars roll up alongside him. She and her family likely will leave Thousand Oaks once David finishes high school.

“We have to get on with our lives; to be honest, we’re looking forward to moving out of state,” she said, adding that her son tends to discuss the incident more with his friends than with his family.

“But (the shooting is) something that’s always on David’s mind. They fire a starter’s gun four times at football games and he jumps. For that millimeter of a second it really startles him.”

Smith said that after several months of not wanting to talk about the shooting, he and Behling are able to kid about it.

Wide receiver Billy Miller, who was headed to North Ranch Park with Behling and Smith that day in February but stopped to eat on the way, said the incident is rarely discussed among team members.

“At first it was a huge deal, but it’s died down,” Miller said. “We’re a close team and we’re able to joke with them when we do talk about it, even though it’s no joking matter. You just try and give them all the support you can.”

Though it is obvious Benkert doesn’t relish discussing the incident with those outside his program, he and his staff are vigilant in their efforts to keep Westlake players out of trouble. He distributes handouts advising players on the possible dangers of parties and drugs.

In 1992, he established a voluntary drug testing program.

“We’re constantly having conversations where we remind them that they represent their families, the school and the community,” Benkert said. “When they walk outside the gates we hope they take it to heart and don’t get themselves involved in a negative situation.

“But who would think going to a park in Westlake would have ramifications?”