Westminster Killing Will Test State’s ‘Street Terrorist’ Law : Courts: Three gang members charged in woman’s shooting death will face additional count. Prosecutors are trying the strategy for the first time locally to win a stiffer sentence.

Orange County prosecutors, putting a 1989 anti-gang law to the test for the first time in the county, branded three young Santa Ana men “street terrorists” Tuesday as they brought charges against them for the weekend slaying of a local woman.

Shocked residents in Westminster’s Bowling Green Park neighborhood, meanwhile, have begun banding together in the aftermath of the apparently random violence, vowing not to let street gangs take over their usually quiet neighborhood.

“A lot of people say, ‘Well, it’s time we moved,’ ” said Edith Aguon, whose home is beside the park. “That’s ridiculous. I am not going to go, and I’m not going to lock myself in.”

Janet L. Bicknell, 49, of Westminster was fatally shot in the head Sunday night around 11 p.m. on the way home from a grocery store when she was attacked by a group of teen-age gang members drinking beer and scrawling graffiti in Bowling Green Park, police said.

The gang members had decided to steal the next car that passed them in the park, and Bicknell happened to be in “the wrong place at the wrong time,” police said. She was found by a passerby, slumped over the steering wheel of her Toyota Corolla.

Authorities were reluctant to discuss their investigation, but some details did emerge in court Tuesday as prosecutors named the suspected gunman in the attack and tried to pin down the roles of the other alleged participants.

Three adults arrested minutes after the slaying appeared Tuesday in Municipal Court in Westminster to answer charges, but their arraignment was postponed to allow their lawyers time to review the case. Two unidentified juveniles were also arrested.

The adult defendants are: Enrique Morales Segoviano, 18, and Christopher Frank Martinez, 18, both of Santa Ana; and Antonio Espinoza Gonzalez, 20, of Westminster.

Police allege that all three are members of Santa Ana’s 5th Street Gang, a group implicated in some of the area’s most violent gang attacks in recent years.

This could prove a key point when it comes time for trial and possible sentencing because prosecutors decided Tuesday to use for the first time a section of the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Protection Act, enacted in California in 1989.

Prosecutors will try to prove that the three defendants, in addition to other charges, are guilty of “street terrorism”--meaning they were knowing and active participants in a gang that had committed at least two serious felonies, such as drug-dealing or homicide.

In the past several years, the Orange County district attorney’s office has cited evidence of “street terrorism” to try to get extra time imposed against a defendant at sentencing, said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Anderson, who is prosecuting the Bicknell case. But the office has never used “street terrorism” as a separate charge, he said.

The main motivation for using it now, Anderson said, is to win a stiffer sentence against Martinez.

There is little evidence that Martinez did much more than spray-paint graffiti twice in the park, Anderson said. So rather than charging him only with misdemeanor counts of vandalism, prosecutors will try to show that he had actively participated in “a pattern of criminal gang activity.” This felony carries a maximum sentence of three years.

Segoviano and Gonzales both face the “street terrorism” charge, in addition to other allegations.

Under the complaint filed Tuesday, authorities allege that Segoviano, who reportedly has a history of drug problems and was on probation for gang activities, was the gunman in the attack. He could face life imprisonment--or possibly the death penalty--if convicted of murder, attempted robbery, use of a firearm and street terrorism as charged.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, faces nearly seven years in prison if convicted as an accessory to murder and street terrorism. He was the getaway driver, Anderson alleged.

Anderson said prosecutors also hope to try the arrested 16-year-old as an adult and charge him with murder for allegedly helping Segoviano in the actual killing. Charges against the 14-year-old have not been determined, he added.

Deputy Public Defender Dennis Sakai, who was appointed to represent Segoviano at Tuesday’s hearing but does not expect to stay on the case, said he was surprised by the novel use of the street terrorism charge.

“It really threw me off when I first heard it,” Sakai said. “I said, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen it used here before.’ I did a double-take.”

In the neighborhood where the murder occurred, residents also were doing double-takes over the death of Bicknell, a playground supervisor at Sun View Elementary School in Huntington Beach.

In an effort to assuage the fears of residents, Westminster Police Lt. Richard Main said officers “are going to be providing especially heavy patrol checks to make sure that no gang activity or no criminal activity reoccurs there, to give them a peace of mind. It’s going to be pretty high profile for a while.”

Police will have help from the neighbors themselves, said Marsha Young, whose front door is only a few yards from the shooting site.

She said residents will no longer be apathetic about a neighborhood that, increasingly, has been hit with graffiti and other signs of trouble.

“After 10 p.m., anybody that sees anything is going to bring the police out,” she said. “I do know that ignoring everything will hurt.”

She added that the tragedy probably had resurrected the Bowling Green Residents Assn., which suspended its activities at the beginning of the year due to a lack of interest.

Many residents did not know Bicknell. Others knew knew her only as the friendly neighbor who waved to them as she drove by. But many nonetheless put their names on a sympathy card that neighbors left on the doorstep of the home Bicknell shared with a longtime roommate.

“It could have been anybody,” said Elizabeth Diaz, Bicknell’s next-door neighbor. “I thought it was sad.”