2 Sentenced to Jail for Attack on Valley Teens : Courts: San Diego college students given one-year terms for vicious assault at San Onofre State Beach.

VISTA —  Two San Diego college students involved in a savage attack on two San Fernando Valley teen-agers last October were sentenced Friday to a year in jail, following an emotional plea from the victims’ families for the maximum punishment and a remorseful request from the students for leniency.

San Diego County Superior Court Judge Runston G. (Tony) Maino told Derek Ward Stewart, 21, and Nam Le Pham, 20, that a year should be the minimum time spent behind bars, followed by five years of supervised probation. Maino also ordered Stewart and Pham to pay $19,000 in restitution to their victims.

“It was a group attack and I’m sure you didn’t mean for there to be injuries,” Maino said before a courtroom filled to capacity with family and friends of both the defendants and victims.

“If I concentrate only on the injuries, it’s a state prison case,” Maino said. But he added that he was also considering the defendants’ lack of criminal record in meting out punishment.

The sentence was handed down after an impassioned plea from prosecutors and the victims’ families for the maximum eight-year prison term. For their part, Stewart and Pham asked to be released from custody and placed on probation.

Stewart, who was attending San Diego State University at the time of the Oct. 2, 1994, attack, and Pham, a Mesa Junior College student in San Diego, had pleaded guilty to one count of mayhem for their part in the beating of Brian Powers, 19, and Powers’ 19-year-old friend at San Onofre State Beach.

The attack erupted after the victims, who were camping with their girlfriends, asked a group of a dozen or more students at the next campsite to turn down their music since it was almost midnight. The larger group--many of them members of a fraternity at San Diego State University--had been drinking heavily, according to court testimony.

After about the third request, Powers’ West Hills friend, who asked not to be identified, angrily shouted, “Just shut the . . . music off,” according to his testimony.

The youth said he was initially attacked by one male. Others joined in, pushed the victim into his truck parked nearby and began slamming his head against the truck.

He tried to break free, but an attacker whom he could not identify grabbed his penis through his sweat pants, then squeezed and wrenched it from side to side. The victim had earlier testified that he “felt kind of a pop . . . and the pain was unbelievable.”

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William F. Powers Jr., Brian’s father, described the injuries in court Friday while urging Maino to send his son’s attackers, who “look like decent young men” to prison, despite their clean records.

Brian Powers’ “head was swollen, his eye was swollen shut, his ribs were beaten and his shoulder was literally kicked out of its socket,” the elder Powers said.

“One tried to strangle my son, so while he was being kicked, while he was being punched, he couldn’t breathe. [The other victim] has a metal plate in his head, not to mention the unspeakable act on his genitals. Why else would someone do something like that unless they’re vicious?”

Stewart apologized to the families in open court Friday. “All I can do is learn from my mistake. I know it was a big mistake.”

Pham told the court he wished he could change things and that “I think about this every day, every hour and every minute. The only thing I can do for the victims is pray for them.”