El Segundo Teen Sentenced in Shootings During Chase : Courts: A high school student is ordered to serve 18 years to life for the attack upon members of a street gang. The defense, citing allegations that there was a second gunman, says the case might not be finished.

In a case that marked El Segundo’s first encounter with gang violence, a local high school student has been sentenced to 18 years to life in state prison for shooting two Burbank youths he was helping to chase out of town.

Jeffrey Dobrovolny, now 18, stood solemnly Monday, occasionally clenching his jaw, as Torrance Superior Court Judge John P. Shook ordered him to begin serving his sentence for second-degree murder and attempted murder in a California Youth Authority facility.

Dobrovolny was 17 on Feb. 16, 1991, when shots fired from a carful of El Segundo youths killed 17-year-old Jeramy Perales and wounded Jorge Castellano, 21, during a multicar chase through at least three South Bay cities.

Dobrovolny’s family and relatives of the two victims sobbed softly in the audience as Shook denied a defense motion for a new trial and tried at last to close a case that shattered El Segundo’s community peace.

“This case was tried . . . with a great deal of precision,” Shook said. “I think the evidence in the case was overwhelming against Mr. Dobrovolny.”

But defense attorney Charles (Ted) Mathews warned that the case might not be over.

Three months after the trial ended last October, an anonymous letter was sent to the El Segundo Police Department claiming that at least one other person was firing a gun at the fleeing Burbank youths that night. The second gun is buried in an El Segundo back yard, the writer insisted.

Without knowing who wrote the letter, however, detectives said they cannot obtain a search warrant to look for a second weapon.

Lt. David Cummings said detectives tried to track down the letter’s author by comparing the handwriting with letters submitted to the court on Dobrovolny’s behalf. No connection was found, they said, and nothing more could be done.

“We were not able to develop any new information from the letter, so we reached a dead end,” Cummings said. “We would welcome any new information.”

Mathews, who said handwriting experts believe that the writer is a teen-age girl, said he is working with a private investigator to try to find her.

“She was quite anguished in what she wrote,” Mathews said. “We’d like that person to come forward and talk to us.”

According to testimony during the trial, violence erupted at the end of a raucous Friday night of drinking and carousing for groups of youths from both El Segundo and Burbank.

Perales, Castellano and four friends--some of whom are affiliated with a North Hollywood street gang--encountered as many as 25 El Segundo youths who had gathered at an all-night sandwich shop on Imperial Highway after a high school basketball game.

Friction flared at the shop and the groups began hurling beer bottles and cans at each other. At one point, members of both groups were involved in a brief foot chase.

Outnumbered, four of the Burbank youths, including Perales and Castellano, fled the scene in a pickup truck, shouting death threats. Several carloads of El Segundo youths soon set out to look for the truck.

Before joining the search, Dobrovolny ran home to fetch a .22-caliber rifle that was a birthday gift from his grandfather.

When the car in which he was riding came across the pickup truck stopped on Imperial Highway, Dobrovolny pointed the rifle out the window and fired several shots, according to authorities.

Mathews said Dobrovolny fired over the youths’ heads to discourage them from ever coming back to El Segundo. Deputy Dist. Atty. Al Botello said Perales was struck in the arm during the volley.

During the chase that ensued, several more shots were fired. Mathews contended at the trial that other El Segundo youths also were armed and firing shots during the chase.

When the chase concluded at a Manhattan Beach gas station, Perales had been struck again, this time in the chest, and lay dying in the bed of the pickup truck. Castellano, who leaped from the truck and stabbed at one of the pursuing drivers with a box cutter, had been shot in the stomach.

Dobrovolny buried his rifle in the back yard of his home and fled to Hawaii. Several days later, he flew back to Los Angeles and turned himself in. He told detectives at the time that he thought he might have shot someone in the stomach.

Dobrovolny’s mother, Chris, believes others questioned about the chase were not so forthright.

“I hope eventually the other kids that were there come forward with the truth,” she said, fighting back tears after her son was sentenced. “Maybe their consciences will bother them.”