Who hasn’t cut classes in high school to hang out with friends? In this true crime, several students cut classes and were hanging out in a local park. One boy, perhaps others, it’s unknown, brought a handgun to the park. When they spotted a school resource officer approaching them, the boy handed the gun to a girl and told her to get rid of it. She tossed it in a drainage canal.
The resource officer saw the girl toss the weapon into the canal. He detained her and the boy to ask them questions. She told the officer the gun belonged to the boy.
The school expelled the girl and the boy. They didn’t see each other for months because the girl attended school elsewhere in the same district—the boy moved 50 miles away to live with his mother. Less than a year after their expulsion, they reconnected.
When the authorities scrutinized her social media presence, cell phone data, and spoke with relatives, the boy who had gotten into trouble with her when they skipped school became a person of interest. In text messages, the boy asked the girl to hang out. He promised her something out of the Wild West.
She agreed to meet him. Later that evening, she posted photos of the two of them ‘together again’ and then she vanished.
When the authorities looked at the boy’s social media and cell phone data, they found a message from the boy to his brother on the same day he and she reconnected that said, be ready for tonight. Get shovels and lighter fluid. In fact, the evidence mounted and pointed at one person, the boy who had told her to get rid of the gun that day in the park. They found a significant amount of her blood in the trunk of his vehicle.
He chose a jury trial—perhaps he assumed since they had no body-there was no crime. If so, he was wrong. The jury found the former school friend guilty of first-degree murder.
At the sentencing, the superior court judge said to the 23-year-old defendant,
“There are many questions left unanswered, none more than where is she?”
The judge sentenced him to life in prison.
The brother pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact. A judge sentenced him to probation for twelve months.
Prosecutors presented their case as one of anger that grew into a murder plot over the expulsion from school and that he blamed the girl for his life crumbling down around him.
Her family still does not know where her remains are. On the last day anyone saw her, the brothers turned off their cell phones as they drove into the nearby mountains.
Source: People, Law & Crime, News Channel 3, ABC 30 Action News
All data and information provided is for information and research purposes only and not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. Criminal cases may have been appealed or verdicts overturned since I researched the case. All information is provided on an as-is basis.
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