Teen Driver to Serve 30 Days in Bicyclist’s Death

The teen-age driver who admitted responsibility in the death of a 14-year-old bicyclist was given a 30-day jail sentence and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service by a Juvenile Court judge Friday.

Pejman B. Alaghamandan, 17, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor manslaughter, also had his driver’s license suspended for a year and was ordered to pay restitution--the amount not yet specified--to the victim’s family.

Alaghamandan was driving a Volkswagen full of teen-agers in Irvine on Sept. 20, 1988, when the car struck David Leidal, an honors student on his way to classes at University High School. Leidal was in a crosswalk at a four-way stop at Michelson Drive and Yale Avenue. Witnesses told police that Alaghamandan ran the stop sign.

Immediately after Leidal’s death, his family asked doctors to give one of his kidneys to Jeff Bergan, a 26-year-old freshman football and wrestling coach at Mission Viejo High School, who was hospitalized, suffering from kidney failure and a weak heart. The transplant was successful. Leidal was playing lineman as a freshman for University High at the time he was killed.

In a closed hearing, Judge C. Robert Jameson ordered Alaghamandan to spend 90 days in jail but suspended 60 days of it on the condition that he obey all laws during a year of formal probation, during which he must report regularly to a probation officer.