Boy accused in Lamar High killing alleged he was raped, will be tried in juvenile court

The case of a 15-year-old boy who is accused of capital murder in the shooting death of another student on steps outside Lamar High School in Arlington will be heard at an August trial by a jury in juvenile court after a judge on Friday denied a petition prosecutors filed seeking its transfer to an adult criminal court.

A spray of shotgun pellets missed all but two of about 20 seated youths who were waiting early on March 20 for the school doors to be unlocked or for buses to deliver them elsewhere on the first day of classes following a spring break recess.

After he was taken into custody, the teenager who authorities allege was the shooter told a juvenile services employee that he fired upon the victims when he saw a person who appeared to look like a boy who in October raped him inside a bathroom at the school, Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lloyd Whelchel said at a hearing on Friday at which Judge Alex Kim considered testimony, exhibits and arguments to determine whether to certify the accused as an adult.

For detectives, the accused identified as the assailants in his rape two boys whose photos he reviewed in a school yearbook.

In his closing argument, Whelchel told Kim the sexual assault accusation was false and concocted by the suspect in an attempt to justify what the prosecutor said is the most heinous of offenses, a capital murder.

Earlier in the hearing, Whelchel asked Arlington police homicide unit Detective Krystallyne Robinson whether Jashawn Poirier, who died when buckshot severed the 16-year-old’s brain stem, had sexually assaulted the suspect in his killing.

“No, sir,” the detective testified.

Indeed, Robinson said, there is no indication the respondent, as the accused is known in juvenile legal matters, knew Poirier, who moved to Arlington from Michigan at the beginning of the school year.

A law enforcement records trace showed the boy authorities allege was the shooter purchased a Mossberg model 500 12-gauge shotgun, according to a document known as a factual resume filed in U.S. District Court in connection with the May 17 guilty plea of the accused’s father to firearm possession by a prohibited person.

Later on the day of the homicide, Arlington police executed a state search warrant at an apartment in Arlington where the respondent lived with his father. Inside, officers said they found a revolver, a pistol, a rifle, documents connected to the shotgun and a lock for it.

Robinson testified she believes on the day of the homicide the accused shooter likely walked less than a mile from the apartment to the school. He had a backpack holding the pistol-grip shotgun and no books, which the detective testified suggested “that his intention wasn’t to attend school that day.” Rather, the detective suggested, he was there to shoot.

Two surveillance video recordings of the east side of the school were played during the hearing. At Kim’s direction and defense counsel urging, a screen on which the images were displayed was turned so that it was visible to Kim, Robinson and prosecutors and defense attorneys, but not to people in the gallery.

Robinson narrated parts of the recordings. When the suspect turned a corner, he held the shotgun, the detective testified. He did not remove the weapon from the backpack upon seeing someone he recognized.

He fired twice, just before 7 a.m.

A 16-year-old girl testified that her position and a still-dark sky did not allow her to see the person who fired upon the crowd. She moved to hide with others behind a pillar and discovered she had been shot.

Shrapnel “went so deep into my cheek it could not be removed at the time of my surgery, so it is still inside my face,” the girl testified.

The teenager accused in the homicide was taken into custody in the minutes after the shooting. Kim has ordered that he be held at a juvenile detention facility.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram does not publish the names of youths accused of offenses as juveniles.

Whelchel argued the teenager is not a strong candidate for rehabilitation because he has at times refused to come out of his room while he has been in juvenile detention.

Before the shooting, a problem with his hair led the accused to send a text message to a friend in which he wrote, “I’m so mad I could kill a random person,” Whelchel told Kim. He was angry about his suspension from school before spring break.

The accused is evil, the prosecutor said.

With Whelchel, Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lee Sorrells is prosecuting the respondent.

Had the youth accused in the homicide been prosecuted on capital murder as an adult, he could have been been sentenced by a jury to life in prison and become eligible for parole after serving 40 years.

If the boy is found delinquent in juvenile court, Kim will determine a sentence. Its maximum is 40 years. At a transfer hearing just before the accused is 19, the judge would rule on whether he would continue his sentence at an adult prison or under parole supervision.

Defense attorneys argued that the juvenile court should retain its jurisdiction and spent much of their presentation describing life in adult prison and youth detention. The accused shooter is represented by Lisa Herrick, Frank Adler and Audrey Hatcher.

The defense displayed photos of the razor wire-topped fence at the high-security Gainesville State School, the facility where because of its capital and serious violent offender treatment offerings, the respondent would likely be assigned if he is found delinquent.

“Is it a prison prison?” Adler asked witness Evan Norton, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s senior director of integrated treatment and intervention services. Norton, a psychologist, replied that the juvenile facility is similar.

The defense appeared to ask witnesses to describe the Gainesville facility in order to assuage Kim’s concern, if he had one, that residents found delinquent of extreme violence stroll there unsupervised.

In her opening statement, Herrick said her client had an IQ of 74, but had not received special education services, according to psychological evaluation report. He was never previously accused of an offense.

Prosecutors offered evidence to indicate the respondent’s sexual assault allegation is spurious.

Detectives found the sexual assault assailants that the capital murder respondent identified had school schedules that required they be outside the section of the school where the respondent said the offense occurred.

Caleb Blank, a district attorney’s office investigator, testified that in a telephone interview, the accused’s mother questioned whether her son’s sexual assault report was valid. His mother, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, holds that conclusion because she did not note a change in her son’s demeanor or behavior at or after the date on which he later alleged the sex crime occurred.

She has not traveled to Fort Worth to visit her son because she believes he will decline to see her, Blank testified. The boy has not called his mother since he was taken into custody.

The accused boy did not report a sexual assault to an educator at the school, law enforcement, relatives or friends. He shared the account only after he was in juvenile detention in connection with the killing, Whelchel noted.

Texas Family Code directs the court to consider four elements when determining whether to retain jurisdiction or transfer a case to adult criminal court. The factors are whether the alleged offense was against a person or property; the sophistication and maturity of the child; the record and previous history of the child; and the prospects of adequate protection of the public and the likelihood of the rehabilitation of the child by use of procedures, services, and facilities currently available to the juvenile court.

At a June 2 detention hearing in the case, Kim suggested he might close the courtroom during the certification hearing if he found closure was in the best interest of the accused child. A statute compels open court proceedings in cases involving youths 14 and older unless a judge “for good cause shown, determines that the public should be excluded.”

Kim told attorneys he was concerned about the prospect of tainting the juror pool by exposing it to press coverage of the case. The judge decided to keep the courtroom open. He requested that journalists not publish clear images of the respondent or juvenile witnesses or the names of juvenile witnesses.

Kim said he issued an order prohibiting people in the court gallery from possessing cellphones in part to prevent someone from live-streaming the hearing. A camera recorded it for television news broadcast.

Rose Anna Salinas, chief of the criminal division at the district attorney’s office, observed part of the hearing from the gallery’s front row.

The state and defense stipulated that there is probable cause to believe the respondent committed the offense. Kim limited the state and defense each to two hours of evidence presentation.

The trial, in 323rd District Court in Tarrant County, is scheduled to begin on Aug. 21. Kim will preside.