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Victim of assault assists boys who
beat him January 30, 2007
By Diane Cochran
Criminal charges against four boys
accused of using shovels to beat a Wyoming camp counselor have been
resolved, but authorities won't say how.
The teenagers were accused in 2005
of attacking a counselor at Mount Carmel Youth Ranch, a wilderness
rehabilitation camp for troubled teens near Clark, Wyo.
The counselor, John O'Brien of
Overland Park, Kan., suffered a brain injury, and his family
initially pushed for the boys to be prosecuted as adults.
But O'Brien later changed his mind
and asked that the charges be moved to juvenile court, said Park
County Deputy Prosecutor Tim Blatt.
Surprising request
"The victim convinced us that's
where he wanted them to go," Blatt said. "We were somewhat
surprised."
Cases against the four boys have
concluded, but Blatt said he couldn't reveal what happened because
of juvenile court privacy laws.
"In the long run, I'm satisfied
that the victim's satisfied," he said. "They (the defendants) are
hopefully going to be rehabilitated in the juvenile system."
O'Brien, who couldn't be reached
for this article, told The Gazette in 2005 that he still wanted to
make a career out of working with kids.
After the attack, surgeons removed
a 3-inch-by-3-inch slab of his skull to relieve pressure on his
swelling brain. It was reattached five months later.
Charged in the attack were Kawika
Lundburg of Hawaii, Michael Murray of Illinois, Juan "J.J." Uranga
of California and Quentin Brown of Florida.
They were all 16 in September 2005,
when the assault was alleged to have occurred.
The boys were among nine Mount
Carmel residents being supervised by O'Brien, who had been on the
job for less than two weeks.
According to court documents, the
boys wanted to escape from the ranch and waited for O'Brien to go to
sleep in a sleeping bag outside their tent.
The four who were eventually
charged with crimes used shovels to beat him unconscious and then
took the keys to a camp truck from his pocket, court records state.
Eight of the boys fled in the truck, while one boy stayed behind and
ran for help.
8 boys arrested
Law enforcement found and arrested
the eight boys the next day about 80 miles away. Four of them were
not charged with crimes.
The others were charged as adults,
and a judge ruled in March against a request to move one of the
cases to juvenile court. O'Brien and prosecutors celebrated the
ruling as a victory, and it was expected that the other three cases
also would remain in adult court, where penalties are generally
harsher.
Juvenile court convictions usually
require defendants to be supervised until they turn 18 or 21, and
records are sealed when supervision ends.
After O'Brien changed his mind,
Blatt said his office held lengthy discussions about whether the
teens should be prosecuted as adults or as juveniles.
"As we got into it more, it almost
seemed like there were so many kids, they pumped each other up,"
Blatt said. "They kind of fed off each other and did things they
probably wouldn't have done as individuals."
Even the boys themselves seemed
surprised at what had happened, Blatt said.
Contact Diane Cochran at dcochran@billingsgazette.com
or 657-1287.
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