Walker Middle School victim says flag football team witnessed assault

As other members of his team watched, a Walker Middle School flag football player said he was sexually assaulted by four of his teammates on at least 10 different occasions, according to court documents released Tuesday.

The boy said during each attack, he told his teammates to stop. Every time he was held down while his attackers used a hockey stick and a broomstick, the boy said.

One of the teens threatened the boy and told him he better not tell a soul.

"I'll beat you up if you tell anybody," the attacker told the boy.

Those were some of the details that surfaced when the state attorney's office released 105 pages of pre-trial discovery documents.

Investigators say the four teens bullied the boy before sexually assaulting him with a broomstick and hockey stick in a locker room at the school.

Lee Louis Myers, 14, Raymond A. Price-Murray, 14, Randall John Moye, 14, and Diemante Roberts, 15, have been charged as adults. Each faces four counts of sexual battery and has pleaded not guilty.

Included in the discovery documents released Tuesday were five pages of an interview Hillsborough County sheriff's detectives conducted with the victim on May 16. According to the transcribed interview:

The boy said the attacks began after two or three flag football practices. The boy was changing and leaving the locker room when the assailants "grabbed me and then they just dragged me all the way down," he said.

The victim names Myers, Price-Murray, Moye and Roberts as his attackers and said he was alternately assaulted with a hockey stick and broomstick between 10-12 times while other members of the flag football team watched.

"Was there ever any other students in the locker room?" detectives asked the boy.

"Yes," the boy says, "basically the whole team."

No coaches or teachers witnessed the alleged attacks, the boy said.

The victim tells detectives that Price-Murray and Roberts were the only two who assaulted him with the hockey stick and broomstick while Myers and Moye held him down. No other members of the football team were involved in the attacks, the boy said.

The boy said Price-Murray and Moye would tell him during the school day that "you're gonna get it today at practice."

When detectives asked the boy why he didn't report the incident when it first happened, he said, "I thought they would stop."

What about the second and third time? detectives asked. What made the boy finally speak about it?
The boy said it was because Roberts kept making fun of him at practice.

"So I just cracked," the boy said, "and then I just got mad."

More than 20 other teen witnesses gave conflicting accounts to investigators about the alleged bullying and attacks in the locker room, according to the discovery documents.

Some said that they only saw the victim get poked in the rear with the hockey stick or broomstick; others said the victim's pants were pulled down while some said they don't recall any of the boy's clothes being pulled off.

One witness told detectives that the victim had fought to get away on one occasion and when he did, the boy was laughing.

Another teammate told detectives he saw Moye throw the victim on the ground and hold him there. The witness said he saw Roberts walk towards the two with a hockey stick. But the teammate said he walked out of the locker room before anything else happened.

The witness said he didn't see anything else during the remainder of the flag football season.

Even the written statements the four teen defendants' gave Walker administrators differ in their accounts. Walker administrators thought they were investigating a typical case of bullying when the boys were told by a coach to write their versions of what happened, school district officials said.

Only when the boys turned those written accounts in did officials realize the scope of what may have happened and called law enforcement, the school district said.

Three of the boys say friction already existed between Roberts and the victim before the alleged sexual assault occurred, according to the statements released last week. Myers agreed there was an incident in the locker room and made no mention of a sexual assault.

Investigators took two hockey sticks and a hockey blade from the shower and a broom from the custodian's closet and one from the concession stand for analysis.

Those five items were turned over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's laboratory for testing.

Also turned over were DNA swabs from Moye, Myers, Price-Murray, Roberts and the victim.
Authorities also took 38 photographs at the school, including shots of the locker room, showers, hockey sticks and brooms.

Tim Taylor, Myer's attorney, said earlier that there was no physical evidence linking his client to any crimes. He also complained that the swabs were taken June 3, weeks after the alleged attacks.