Eight Nevada high school students were arrested on murder charges this week in the death of a 17-year-old boy who was beaten unconscious during an after-school brawl this month, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said.
The boy who was beaten, Jonathan Lewis Jr., a student at Rancho High School, died of his injuries days after the Nov. 1 attack, the Las Vegas Police Department said at a news conference on Tuesday.
The fight is believed to have started over a pair of stolen headphones, Lt. Jason Johansson of the Police Department said. The students had planned to meet that day after classes in a back alley less than 300 feet from the campus, he said.
An investigation led the police to identify eight students from Rancho High School who were involved in the fight, Lieutenant Johansson said. They were arrested on Tuesday. Their ages range from 13 to 17, he said, adding that the Police Department was working to identify two other people who might have been involved in the fight.
The eight students, who were not publicly identified, were booked into the Clark County Juvenile Hall, the police said. It could not be determined whether they had lawyers.
It was unclear exactly how Jonathan became involved in the fight. The boy’s family said on a website that Jonathan “tried to help a smaller child who was bullied.” His family did not immediately respond to phone calls on Wednesday.
Lieutenant Johansson said that police believe the headphones, and possibly a vape pen, had been stolen from a friend of Jonathan’s. Once Jonathan was involved in the fight, the lieutenant said, “ten subjects immediately swarm him, put him to the ground, and begin kicking, punching and stomping him.”
Videos of the fight that have circulated on social media show several people exchanging blows. Undersheriff Andrew Walsh of the Police Department described the videos as “extremely disturbing.” Lieutenant Johansson said the video was “very graphic.”
He added: “And in my opinion, very void of humanity.”
After the fight, Jonathan was found “unconscious and unresponsive” in the alley, and someone carried him to Rancho High School, Lieutenant Johansson said. He was taken to a hospital, where it was determined soon after he arrived that he had “nonsurvivable head trauma.”
Six days after the fight, on Nov. 7, Jonathan’s family said that he had been declared medically brain-dead, and that a decision had been made to donate his organs, the lieutenant said. An autopsy performed by the Clark County coroner’s office determined that the cause of death was blunt force trauma.
It was unclear whether the teenagers who were charged could be tried as adults. Under Nevada state law, minors older than 14 can be certified to be tried as an adult if they are accused of a felony offense, including murder. The Clark County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday on whether it would try to prosecute them as adults.
At the news conference on Tuesday, Lieutenant Johansson was asked whether those charged with murder could also face hate crime charges because Jonathan was white and many of the students in the videos were Black. Lieutenant Johansson said that so far there was no evidence that indicated the beating was a hate crime.
“It is a murder, which in my opinion is a very heinous crime in and of itself,” he said.
In a letter sent on Tuesday to teachers and parents, Rancho High School said the district would provide resources for those who needed support.
“This incident has and will continue to impact our school community,” the letter said.
Undersheriff Walsh said that the deadly fight “should be a reminder to all of us to have those difficult conversations with our children, and remind them that their actions have consequences.”
“Their actions have lasting consequences,” he said. “Their actions have life-altering consequences.”