A Las Vegas mom is outraged after four black teens who beat her son to death avoided being tried as adults and escaped any real jail time in a "sweetheart" deal.
Mellisa Ready said the boys were able to "get away with murder" - literally - after the Clark County District Attorney accepted a plea deal on Thursday that downgraded the charges against the four boys from second-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter. In exchange for guilty pleas to the much lower civil conviction, Damien Hernandez, Dontral Beaver, Gianni Robinson, and Treavion Randolph, all of whom were under 18 when they beat 17-year-old Jonathan Lewis to death in an alley last November, will avoid any time in an adult prison and their records will be expunged when they turn 21.
Instead, their cases will be returned to juvenile court, where they'll be charged as minors.
According to reports, Lewis, who was white, was attacked by a mob of teens following an altercation over some wireless headphones. He died from his injuries at a local hospital six days after the incident, and his death was ruled a homicide by blunt force trauma. Disturbing video of the attack shows the crowd surrounding Lewis, whose back is against a fence as he's beaten relentlessly by the mob.
Remember the video that went viral last November of a white kid named Jonathan Lewis being beaten to death at his Vegas high school?
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 2, 2024
The four black kids who killed him were given a plea deal to voluntary manslaughter that will keep them from being tried as adults.
Look at my… pic.twitter.com/ynS24MWySE
Five other teens, including a 13-year-old boy, also plead guilty to manslaughter in the juvenile court system.
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Ready said she was "dumbfounded" by the news that her son's killers had avoided being convicted as adults, saying she'd been told by the district attorney's office that all four were expected to plead guilty to murder in adult court, where they'd likely get no more than two years.
"They knew he was going to die. And they're letting them get away with murder," Ready told local reporters.
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Missouri AG Andrew Bailey launches investigation into gym for letting a man use the women’s locker room.
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