Teen-Ager Gets 1 Year for Shooting Into Crowd : Courts: John Yi, a former Westlake High student, gives tearful apology and accepts the blame for the 1994 melee.

Despite tearful vows that he would never touch a gun again, former Westlake High School student John Yi was slapped with a one-year jail sentence Friday for shooting at a crowd of classmates during an interracial brawl.

Moments later, teen-age co-defendant William Huang pleaded guilty to assault charges in the Feb. 3, 1994, melee that left three Westlake students with gunshot wounds and the otherwise quiet North Ranch neighborhood badly rattled.

Yi, 17--sporting a fresh haircut, crisp dark suit and repentant air--sat humbly as Ventura County Superior Court Judge Bruce Clark sentenced him to a year in jail and five years’ probation for the shooting.

Clark later accepted guilty pleas from 17-year-old Huang, a Taiwan-born, Orange County resident who admitted shooting at and beating football players with a board during the fight at a Thousand Oaks park.

Yi and Huang could be the first and last of the five original defendants who will ever be convicted in the case.

A Ventura County judge in January acquitted the main defendant, Oubansack (Andy) Sonethanouphet, 17, of charges he shot two of the football players. And prosecutors say they believe the other two defendants, brothers James and Frank Lee, have fled to their native Taiwan, which has no extradition treaty with the United State.

After the hearing, the mother of one of the shooting victims walked out in tears.

“Their lives have been shattered by this in ways you can’t imagine,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John Vanarelli said of the victims and their families.

Of the jail sentence--which Yi’s attorney said he may try to change to work furlough at a May 19 hearing--Vanarelli said, “I was extremely disappointed. I think it was very inappropriate.

“I think when you use a gun--and I think (Yi) used it--you need to be punished as severely as possible,” he said.

Defense attorney William Graysen said he, too, was unhappy because Clark would not sentence Yi to just 90 days that he already served in Ventura County Juvenile Hall after arrest.

“We’re going to live with this,” Graysen said. “He’s accepted this. He’s going to get on with his life. I don’t think we’ll see any more trouble from John Yi.”

Two images of John Yi emerged during the sentencing hearing.

One was a polite, contrite young man seeking to put an act of rash stupidity behind him.

The other was a convicted criminal who precipitated the brawl, fired wildly at classmates and then conned teachers and co-workers into putting in a good word for him with the judge.

Yi dabbed away tears as he stood and read aloud a lengthy apology to the shooting victims and their families.

“I’m sorry for the people who were scared that day, and for the people I may have hurt that day,” he said. “It was a panicked and rushed thing I did.”

Yi took blame for the brawl, saying it started out as a fistfight he had arranged between two rivals, his friend James Lee and Westlake High football player Curtis Simmons.

“James was always talking about shooting Curtis. He was adamant to the point of obsession,” Yi said. “I asked James if there was anything I could do so he wouldn’t kill Curtis, but he said no.”

When the fistfight exploded into a violent clash between Lee’s Asian friends and Simmons’ white teammates, Yi said, he fired the gun into the air at a 45-degree angle trying to make them stop.

Not so, Vanarelli argued.

Witness after witness testified at Sonethanouphet’s trial that Yi cruised slowly past the fracas in a red Acura, shooting directly at the crowd and at classmate Jared Kline’s pickup truck. Kline’s arm was grazed by a bullet.

“The reason that John Yi pleaded guilty is quite simply because if he went to trial, he would have been convicted of shooting a gun at an occupied vehicle,” Vanarelli said.

As for glowing letters written to Judge Clark on Yi’s behalf, Vanarelli said, “I think his teachers have had the wool pulled over their eyes. If he was the kind of person described in those letters of recommendation, he wouldn’t have been up in that park that day firing that weapon.”

Free on bail and living somewhere in Los Angeles County--his attorney would not say where--Yi is to return May 19 for review of his jail sentence.

Huang, also free on bail, is set to be sentenced June 9 for admitting he hit Curtis Simmons with a board and shot teammate David Behling in the back of the head.

Behling said Friday that he still suffers headaches and occasionally jumbled vision from the shooting.

Of Yi’s one-year sentence for assault with a firearm, Behling said, “I don’t think it’s enough. I’d say at least three years. I mean, he was old enough to know what he was doing.”