Four Las Vegas teenagers accused in the fatal beating of their high school classmate have agreed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a deal that will keep them from being tried as adults, lawyers said Thursday. The teens were originally charged in January as adults with second-degree murder and conspiracy in the November death of 17-year-old Jonathan Lewis Jr.. Cellphone video of the fatal beating was shared across social media. The deal announced during a hearing Thursday before Clark County District Judge Tierra Jones calls for the four to be sent to juvenile court and face an undetermined length of imprisonment in a juvenile detention center, the AP reports.
Should any of the teens back out of the deal, then all four would again be charged in adult court, Chief Deputy District Attorney John Giordani said. "The offer is contingent on everyone's acceptance," Giordani said. The four were among nine teenagers who were arrested in Lewis' death. Lewis was attacked on Nov. 1 just off the campus of Rancho High School where all were students. Authorities have said the students agreed to meet in the alley to fight over a vape pen and wireless headphones that had been stolen from Lewis' friend. Lewis died from his injuries six days later.
Defense lawyer Robert Draskovich, representing one of the four defendants, called the deadly fight a tragedy, but said convicting the four students of murder as adults would have been a second tragedy. He acknowledged that his client was among those who kicked Lewis while he was on the ground but said a jury also would have seen video showing at least one of the people in a group with Lewis had a knife.
- "I'm just so dumbfounded and hurt and confused," Mellisa Ready, Jonathan Lewis' mother, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "I don't even know what's going on, and I should know." She told KLAS that she had heard from the Clark County district attorney's office that the teens were going to plead guilty to murder in the adult court system.
- Giordani declined to comment after the hearing Thursday but provided a statement to AP from Clark County DA Steve Wolfson's office. It acknowledged Lewis' mother's comments and "the pain (she) is going through as she mourns the loss of her son." But it said she had been informed last week about the terms of the negotiations.
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