More Top Picks Best Dji Action Cameras
player ready...Saying everybody must be accountable for his or her words, a Cook County Juvenile Court judge on Tuesday sentenced a 12-year-old Homewood boy to a psychiatric hospital because the youth wrote a letter threatening to kidnap four female classmates and kill one.
Judge Michael Stuttley sentenced the James Hart Middle School 7th grader to an out-of-state psychiatric hospital until it is determined he is well enough to return home. The boy, who also was sentenced during the hearing to five years of probation, was told not to have contact with the girls and their families.
“Young man, you have to be responsible for what you say and for what you write,” Stuttley said during a court hearing that produced tears from the victims and the accused.
“I know what I did was wrong,” the tall, lanky youth responded in admitting to the charges. “I regret it. (The girls) didn’t deserve it. I apologize for everything I put them through. Nobody should have gone through that.”
The sentence came as a relief to the girls, who told the judge they had complained to Homewood School District 153 officials for months that the boy was harassing them. The May letter, they said, made them fear for their lives.
“I’m afraid to go anywhere alone,” one of the girls said through tears, her voice barely audible. “I don’t think I will ever know what it feels like to be safe again.”
“I fear I will live a life of being afraid. I am only 13,” said another.
Prosecutors charged the boy in a juvenile petition last month with six counts of solicitation to commit aggravated kidnapping and one count of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. The kidnapping charges stem from the two-page letter he wrote, asking six friends for help in his plot to abduct and imprison the girls.
The murder charge–the details of which had been withheld until Tuesday’s hearing–stems from allegations that the youth asked a classmate to help him “commit murder” and that he filled out an application to buy a pellet gun, Assistant State’s Atty. Suzanne McGinnis said during the hearing.
The police investigation began in May, after a teacher found a copy of the two-page letter on the floor of her classroom. Investigators say the letter discussed building a two-story barricade in which to imprison the girls and store a cache of weapons. It also talked of planting bombs in the area.
The charges came as educators and law enforcement officials across the nation grapple with schoolyard shootings and threatening comments made by students. In a series of high-profile shootings–including attacks in Jonesboro, Ark., and Springfield, Ore.–the suspects shared their alleged schemes before the attacks.
Although the Homewood boy’s letter sounded like adolescent fantasy, Homewood officials were not taking any chances.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office has refused from the outset to discuss details of the case. But according to the girls, their parents, and Homewood police, the threatening letter was the culmination of a year of harassment.
Investigators say the boy had a crush on one of the girls and, through his friends, made several attempts to contact her. After the girl rebuffed his advances, he sent his friends to threaten the girl and her three friends, according to Tuesday’s testimony.
The girls and their parents said they complained to school officials.
“No one listened. The problems have been ignored,” one mother said. “My daughter’s faith in the school system and the school’s counselor is gone now.”
District Supt. Jim Mahan would not discuss the case, but he defended the school’s handling of the situation.
“There were warning signs and we did take action,” Mahan said. “Was it sufficient? I’m just saying that our sensitivity was heightened. Was it adequate? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”
The boy took his crush one step further in October when he sent the girl a chapter of a book he wrote portraying him as a sort of Luke Skywalker and her as his Princess Leia, according to the girl’s mother. She also said the boy had written about her daughter in a daily journal he turned in to one of his teachers.
The girl took the chapter of the book to the school’s dean. She also told the dean that the boy stole her hairbrush from her locker.
More Top Picks French Presse
Mahan acknowledged the girl talked to the dean about the book and the hairbrush. He would not discuss the journal, saying only that the journal remains “between the teacher and the child.”