KANSAS CITY, Missouri — A 15-year-old boy charged with opening fire during the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally has been sentenced to prison in juvenile hall.
“That’s not who I am,” the teen, referred to in court documents as RG, said during Thursday’s hearing. He described himself as a good kid before he joined a group of peers involved in the February 14th shootingThe Kansas City Star reported.
The host of a local radio show was killed, 25 were injured and 69 others suffered other injuries, including broken bones and dislocated joints, as they fled the scene, Kansas City Police Detective Grant Spiking said.
Jackson County prosecutors say the shooting occurred during a fight between two groups. Lyndell Mays, one of the three men accused of murder in Lisa Lopez Galvan case are accused of being the first person to start shooting.
RG then began shooting at Mays, hitting another member of his own group, Dominic Miller, who is also charged with murder, Spiking said.
“You made some bad choices, but that doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t make you a bad child,” Jennifer Phillips, an administrative judge in Jackson County Family Court, said during a proceeding that was similar to a criminal hearing in adult court.
A stay in a state Department of Youth Services facility typically lasts nine to 12 months, according to a deputy juvenile officer at the Jackson County Courthouse.
Earlier this month, Phillips accepted the teen’s plea that he committed the charge of unlawful use of a firearm by knowingly discharging a firearm at someone.
The Jackson County juvenile detention officer, who oversees juvenile cases, has dismissed a second felony charge and an armed robbery charge and agreed not to go through the certification process that could result in his case being sent to adult court.
Jon Bailey, the teen’s attorney, asked that he be released and placed under an intensive supervision program and house arrest, on the condition that he not use social media.
“Our house isn’t a home without him,” the teen’s mother told Phillips.
But a lawyer for the juvenile department argued that the time he spent in juvenile hall would help him distance himself from negative peer influences.
Two other teens have been charged in the shooting. Phillips ruled last month that one of them will not be prosecuted as an adult, and the other was being held on weapons-related charges that do not warrant an adult trial.