PRISON TERMS IN KIDNAP METED 2 TEENS SENTENCED IN PAIR'S ABDUCTION.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Two Palmdale teenagers charged in the kidnapping of an elderly couple from their home at gunpoint in the middle of the night were each sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison.

Reputed street gang members Jorge Duran, 18, and Daniel Segovia, 19, were sentenced after pleading no contest to kidnapping, robbery, carjacking and making terrorist threats.

``I think they knew the strength of the case, and if they elected to go to trial and got convicted, which I think was a strong likelihood, they were facing multiple life terms,'' Deputy District Attorney Hayden Zacky said. ``With this disposition, it was good for every party involved, including the victims and witnesses.''

The two defendants, who also admitted that the crime was done to benefit a criminal street gang, must serve 85 percent of their prison sentence before they are eligible for parole, Zacky said.

The defendants were sentenced in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Duran's attorney, Harold Greenberg, said the plea was in the best interest of his client, noting that four counts carried life terms.

``If you figure out the percentages, we had to get an acquittal on 15 counts, and the D.A. had to get conviction on one. ... The odds are not that good,'' Greenberg said.

Duran and Segovia were arrested August 2002 after deputies spotted the elderly couple's car being driven with its headlights off, with the boys in the front seat and the couple in the back.

Both boys were found unfit to be tried in Juvenile Court.

The teens also were accused of robbing another Palmdale couple in their home, less than three weeks before the Aug. 16 robbery of the elderly couple, and of robbing a beer delivery truck driver. Duran was accused of trying to carjack a newspaper delivery driver's vehicle minutes before the robbery of the elderly couple.

The husband died in December.

Investigators said they didn't know why the intruders picked the couple's home in the 4100 block of Saddleback Road. Their home is less than a block from the intersection where the attempt was made to carjack the newspaper delivery vehicle.

One boy knocked on the couple's door at 3 a.m., pointed a handgun at the man who opened it and forced his way inside. The other boy then joined him inside, and they demanded money and valuables, deputies said.

Not satisfied with their take, the teens ordered the couple into their car and drove off. Investigators believe the defendants were taking the victims to a bank to make a withdrawal out of an ATM machine.

Duran and Segovia also were charged with robbing a couple in the middle of the night in a home on Third Street East in Palmdale on July 30, 2002. The robbers took the couple's Toyota Tundra pickup truck, stereo system, money, videocassette recorder and a wallet, prosecutors said.

Several hours later, using the stolen pickup truck, two robbers confronted a delivery truck driver while he was unloading beer at a business in Lancaster, and they took his wallet and some cases of beer, prosecutors said.

The wallet from the earlier home invasion robbery was found at the scene of the delivery truck robbery, officials said.

The carjacking attempt occurred when the newspaper delivery driver stopped at the intersection of Avenue R and 40th Street East. A teen pointed a gun at him through his window.

The delivery driver laid down and stepped on the gas and called the Sheriff's Department, officials said.

Deputies spotted the elderly couple's car being driven without its headlights on at 3:20 a.m. Their suspicion deepened when they saw the two teenagers in the front and an elderly couple in the rear. When the deputies turned on their patrol car's red lights, the other car stopped, and the two teenagers got out and ran, deputies said.

One suspect was captured almost immediately in another vehicle leaving an apartment complex in the 4100 block of East Avenue R.

Several hours later the second suspect was captured inside a mobile home park near Avenue R and 45th Street East.

Karen Maeshiro, [phone]

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com