
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 8, 1994                   TAG: 9407110185
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VIDEOTAPED ASSAULTERS RELEASED

Four teen-agers who were videotaped committing random assaults on students at a Roanoke high school were released this week after spending a month in a juvenile detention home.

Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge John Ferguson had ordered the youths held after he viewed the videotape at a June 7 hearing.

Prosecutors have said the four assailants allowed themselves to be videotaped by a fifth student, and later boasted on camera about the attacks.

The video shows the four youths roaming the William Fleming campus as part of a bet in which they picked out a victim and tried to knock the student down with one punch.

If the victim did not fall to the ground, according to the terms of the bet, the next assailant took a punch at him.

At one point in the video, the four assailants can be seen rejecting one potential victim as "too small" before shoving one student in a hallway and hitting a second one in the head two times.

The four youths, who were suspended from Fleming shortly after the incident, are not being identified because of their ages. One was 17; the others were 16.

At a sentencing Wednesday, Prosecutor Betty Jo Anthony had asked that the students receive additional time.

"The defendants were doing this just as a matter of pure meanness," Anthony said. "They weren't fighting for or against something. ... They were just daring each other to do it."

But in deciding not to impose additional incarceration, Ferguson noted that the youths received high evaluations during a month at the Coyner Springs Juvenile Detention Center.

Ferguson gave the youths 30-day suspended sentences, fined them $200 and ordered three to perform community service, Anthony said. A fourth juvenile who received the highest marks at Coyner Springs was not required to perform community service.

The student who was operating the video camera, a member of the school's video yearbook staff, did not face criminal charges.

School officials have said they are not sure if the four assailants were aware they were being videotaped.

The camera operator followed the attackers through several buildings and across the campus, and at one point one of the youths is seen on camera boasting about being out on bond for a cocaine charge at the time.

The video also shows the four students recounting the attacks with "high-five" hand slaps and laughter.

by CNB