Teen takes plea deal in shooting of Utica school security guard after Proctor football game
The teenager accused of shooting a Utica City School District security guard in the head during a parking lot fight after a high school football game in September has accepted a plea deal.
Jahlil Chapman, 17, entered a plea of guilty on Friday to one count of attempted murder in the second degree and one count of criminal possession of a weapon on school grounds, Oneida County District Attorney Todd Carville said.
His sentence for the attempted murder charge, to be determined by the court, will be between 18 and 20 years, Carville said. His sentencing is scheduled for March 8.
Chapman will concurrently serve a sentence of between 1-1/3 and four years for the possession charge, Carville said. He will also face five years of post-release supervision.
The shooting followed the Proctor-Binghamton football game
On Saturday, Sept. 9, the Thomas R. Proctor High School football team defeated Binghamton 60-30 in a home game with a weapons detector screening fans. In the parking lot afterward, though, a fight broke out between two groups of youth.
Some members of the groups have committed crimes and a layperson might refer to them as gangs, Carville acknowledged. But the groups don’t necessarily meet the formal definition of a gang, which must have a common goal to commit crime, he said.
“I don’t know that we can necessarily say that,” he said. “But they did have names to their groups. And they did have issues with each other.”
District security guards and Utica police officers tried to break up the fight. One group of youth had a knife and Chapman, in the other group, had a gun, police said previously.
Chapman tried to shoot a 16-year-old boy, instead hitting security guard Jeffrey Lynch in the back of the head, according to the indictment against Chapman.
Lynch was rushed to the hospital and reported later that evening to be in critical, but stable condition; he is expected to, in time, make a full recovery.
After the incident, the school district and schools its teams were scheduled to play rushed to put measures in place to beef up security and to make athletes, parents and spectators feel safe, switching game venues and adding weapons detectors in some cases. For the first week after the fight, only parents were allowed to attend sporting events in Utica.
When Chapman might get out of jail will depend on the exact sentence the judge sets, Carville said. But if the sentence were the minimum of 18 years, he would have to serve at least 87 percent of it before he could be released, he said.
More: Suspect arrested in shooting after Proctor football game Saturday
More: 7 more minors charged in post-football game fight in Utica that left security officer shot
Asked about the justice of the plea deal, Carville said he’ll make a statement about justice when Chapman is sentenced. But it will, he said, talk about the appropriateness of the sentence given the crime’s “ripple effect” on Lynch, the school and the whole community.
“I do believe,” he said, “that the whole community was affected by this incident so the time, I think, will be appropriate. But again, I’ll comment at the time of sentencing on that.”
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Proctor football shooting: Teen gets 18 to 20 years in plea deal
