Paint Attack Defendants Given Prison

Comparing the senseless violence of their random attacks to scenes from the epochal film “A Clockwork Orange,” a judge sentenced three Van Nuys teenagers to four years in prison for late-night sprees in which they fired bruising paint pellets at a dozen people.

“It was violence for the sake of violence,” said Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Sandy R. Kriegler. The defendants, who videotaped the attacks, seemed to derive “the greatest glee out of the greatest infliction of injury,” Kriegler said.

Their mothers sobbed in the courtroom as Anthony Skoblar, 18, and Javier Perez, 17, loosened their ties after the sentencing, waved goodbye and were taken into custody. As his mother pressed her hands to her cheeks, a third defendant, Malcolm Boyd, 19, also was led away. He had been unable to post bail and already was in custody.

Kriegler recommended that the three serve their sentences at the California Youth Authority, where they can take advantage of educational programs. He rejected defense pleas to reconsider the sentences because of the teenagers’ remorse and lack of prior convictions.

Last month, the three had admitted to charges of assault with a deadly weapon and felony vandalism, and agreed to the sentences.

The judge also ordered Skoblar to pay $4,851 in restitution, and the two others to pay $3,062 each.

Skoblar’s lawyer, William Graysen, told the judge that the sentence was particularly harsh because it was being meted out to first-time offenders “in a town where murderers, robbers and child molesters often go unpunished.”

The only difference, he said, was that these defendants made a videotape, which was played on national television and led to wide public revulsion.

Skoblar was the driver of the car, Boyd rode in the passenger seat and wielded the paint gun, and Perez supplied the paint balls, the video shows. A fourth person, 18-year-old Ruffy Flores, operated the camera. He earlier was sentenced to two years in state prison for his role.

The 20-minute videotape documents the threesome breaking into peals of laughter--first as they smashed seven cars with metal bats, and later as they fired orange paint balls at eight pedestrians, two bicyclists, a man sitting on a bench and a homeless woman pushing a shopping cart.

But the tape, along with dozens of letters, psychiatric reports and probation reports, lent little insight into why four clean-cut high school students went on an orgy of violence Nov. 10-17.

“Faulty adolescent reasoning and judgment seem to be the main factors,” opined Skoblar’s lawyer in a sentencing memo. “Peer pressure, boredom, anger, frustration and a poor sense of what a practical joke is may be other factors.”

While Skoblar had had a brush with the law, the other two had no prior record of misconduct, and none had any gang affiliations, drank, smoked or used drugs. Much of their social activity involved friends, school and basketball.

According to court records, they even stopped for doughnuts and hot chocolate during a night of “bashing,” as they called it.

Skoblar at the time of his arrest was on juvenile probation for using hair mousse to scrawl anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual slurs, which he misspelled, on a friend’s car. He had enlisted in the U.S. Army but was discharged when he was arrested for the paint ball attacks.

“I don’t want to be the person on the tape. That’s not the kind of person I’m trying to be,” he wrote in a letter to the judge.

Perez, an honors student and star basketball player at Birmingham High School at the time of his arrest, said in a note to the judge: “We were just thinking about pulling some pranks. But these pranks went way out of hand.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” he added, describing the rampage as “just a night of teenage mischief that got way out of control.” Later, he stated, “I don’t think I’m such a bad teenager.”

Perez told a psychologist that the tape was exaggerated because “we tried to do it like a TV show.” He added, “On the tape we just bragged about it like we were some movie stars. I don’t normally act that way. I should have known better.”

Boyd offered no comment, explanations or pleas for mercy. But a probation report indicated he may have been the most troubled of the teenagers. He had been treated since seventh grade for depression, and at the time of his arrest was taking Prozac for that condition and Ritalin, which is widely prescribed for attention deficit disorder.

His mother, Diane Boyd, told a probation officer that she found a paint gun under his bed two weeks before his arrest. She said she told him to get rid of it. It was Boyd who said on the videotape that bashing was “my coffee and my psychiatry.”

Like Perez, Boyd had aspired to become an FBI agent. But, a probation officer noted, “the defendant appears to have become involved with negative peers.” As Flores held the camera, the other three taunted pedestrians and bicyclists with baseball bats and the paint ball gun, which they aimed at strangers’ faces. The guns, used for war games in which participants wear protective gear, fire paint pellets at up to 300 feet per second. They also joked about, among other things, playing “human head baseball” with their bats.

Videotapes continued to be a major part of the case Monday as defense attorney Graysen played a tape in court of an as-yet unaired segment of an interview of Skoblar and one of the victims by Geraldo Rivera. The victim, identified as Thomas McDonald, tells Skoblar on the video: “I still feel four years is a little steep for what you guys did.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Cohen argued, “You cannot deny the viciousness of their acts. It’s horrendous.”

The prosecutor used two videos: One shows Skoblar lunging and pushing at television cameras after he entered his plea. The other shows McDonald and Skoblar together on a tabloid news magazine, and in this tape, McDonald’s position seemed quite different.

“The only reason he’s sorry is because he got caught,” McDonald said during that interview.

McDonald was not in court and could not be reached for comment.

“As we all know, four years is not four years,” Cohen told the judge. “Four years will equate to just slightly over two years, and I wonder what Mr. McDonald would feel about that.”

The sentences had been agreed to under a plea bargain reached in May. But attorneys tried to convince Kriegler to reconsider.

The judge was firm, calling the video of the attacks “truly shocking.”