Getting teens' statements followed school policy, official says

School district policy was not broken at Walker Middle School when a typical inquiry into the bullying of a student turned into a crime that investigators considered so serious four teens would eventually be charged as adults, a school official says.

Only after the four flag football players gave their written versions of what happened to a coach did Walker administrators realize the scope of what allegedly happened, Hillsborough County School District spokesman Steve Hegarty said today.

Hegarty said he is not sure if parents or a school resource deputy were present when Lee Louis Myers, 14, Raymond A. Price-Murray, 14, Randall John Moye, 14, and Diemante Roberts 15, wrote their accounts.

Authorities say the four teens bullied a teammate for weeks before sexually assaulting him with a broomstick and hockey stick in a locker room at the school.

School district protocol was followed because the incident began as an investigation into bullying, Hegarty said. The teens wrote their accounts on May 8 and were arrested and charged the same day.

"You could argue that they were minors and parents should have been present" when the teens were told by the coach to write down their versions of what happened, said John Trevena, a Largo defense attorney not affiliated with this case.

But in Florida, parents don't have to be present when a child is being questioned by officials on school grounds, Trevena said.

Getting the statements from the teens "was simply a part of the school's investigation," Trevena said.

The statements were first made public on Thursday when a News Channel 8 journalist obtained them from court filings and the details were reported on TBO.com. A Hillsborough County circuit judge signed an emergency order that day to stop TBO.com, The Tampa Tribune and News Channel 8 from running stories containing the four defendants' accounts, saying the discovery material shouldn't be disclosed to the public until trial.

The judge reversed his decision Friday morning.

According to the court documents, two of the four players accused of attacking the boy told authorities that several people were involved in assaulting him with a broomstick and a hockey stick. Three of the four teens said friction already existed between Roberts and the boy before the alleged attack occurred.

Trevena, the Largo attorney, said although those statements were already made public they can still be used as evidence by prosecutors in court.

Then again, a judge may rule that the statements can't be used because of the Fifth Amendment safeguard that protects individuals from incriminating themselves, said Tampa attorney Tom Scarritt.

Trevena said what may happen next is that the defense attorneys for the four teens will file motions to suppress the statements.

Meanwhile, Hillsborough County Clerk of the Court Pat Frank said none of her employees will be reprimanded for the teens' statements being in the court file.

"I didn't think a mistake was made from our perspective," Frank said. "It's not our job to be aware of whether they're supposed to be in the file. We're not judges. We're not attorneys. We're clerks."