Teenager sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for “heinous assault” – Daily Freeman

Lina Portman2 weeks ago

24 3 minutes read

Ty'Juan Gray looks back on his family and friends as he is escorted from Ulster County Juvenile Court where he received 6 1/2 years and three years of post supervision from Judge Bryan Rounds. (Tania Barricklo/Daily Freeman)

KINGSTON, N.Y. — A Kingston High School student who pleaded guilty to second-degree assault was sentenced Wednesday in Ulster County Court to six and a half years in prison for what Ulster County Judge , Bryan Rounds, called it a “heinous attack” on another student. in the high school cafeteria.

In sentencing Ty'Juan Gray, 17, to just shy of the maximum sentence of seven years in state prison, Rounds rejected calls for leniency not only from Gray's attorney, public defender Joey Drillings, but also from the District Attorney's Office, which initially recommended a three-year sentence, and from the Ulster County Probation Department, which recommended a sentence of six months in prison and five years of probation. He also rejected Drillings' application for Gray to be granted young offender status, which would have meant Gray's criminal record would have been sealed.

Rounds agreed to reduce Gray's sentence from the seven-year sentence he initially said he would give him after Drillings said the longer sentence would bring Gray, who turns 18 next week, into a maximum security establishment. “As violent as the act he committed was, I am extremely concerned that he is being brutalized in state prison,” Rounds said. He said the slightly reduced sentence ensures “justice will be served and not revenge.”

In a statement to the court, the victim's mother said the attack “robbed my son of the life he once knew.” After the sentencing, she said the judge had imposed a “temporary sentence” on Gray, but the attack had resulted in “a life sentence for my son.”

At one point, as Rounds was recounting the day's events, Gray's father stood up in the back of the courtroom and declared, “I'm getting the hell out of here,” before storming out. from the courtroom.

Authorities said Gray and another student entered the cafeteria where the victim was eating and attacked him from behind. The victim suffered a fractured skull and significant bleeding as well as a brain injury following the attack. He was flown to Westchester Medical Center where he underwent emergency surgery to remove part of the victim's skull to relieve pressure on the brain. In court, the victim's mother said her son suffered permanent head trauma.

In videos released for Rounds by District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji, Gray and the other alleged attacker can be seen entering the cafeteria and ambushing the 15-year-old who was sitting at a table eating his lunch. Both men can be seen punching the victim to the ground and once he is on the ground, the 15-year-old can be seen kicking the victim while Gray jumps off a table onto the victim's head. victim.

Nneji said that after the attack, Gray and the other attacker are seen on video leaving the cafeteria and being escorted off campus by school security “as if what they had just done in this school 'had no concerns, no consequences.'

“This is depravity,” Nneji said. “It’s a lack of dignity for the lives of others.”

Rounds said he was stunned to learn during Wednesday's proceedings that after beating the victim unconscious, the two attackers were escorted from school property to to a vehicle driven by the teenage girl who filmed the attack and who Rounds said is known to be a driver for a subset of the Bloods street gang.

“Until today, I had no idea of the exact circumstances under which the defendant and co-defendant left the building,” Rounds said. “After doing what they did and with a child who was dying on the concrete floor at the time, they are escorted out of the building to the car of the person who was filming.”

He said the existence of the video belied the defense's claim that the attack was anything other than a “planned attack” carried out with “malice aforethought.”

“A decision was made long before this happened,” Rounds said.

Rounds also had harsh remarks about society as a whole, which he said has come to accept and glorify such violence.

“I think the fact that we accept a level of violence and degradation that is far below what I can remember in my entire life is a sign of how society has evolved in many ways. It's become entertainment. It's sick, it's twisted, it's inhumane,” he said.

“This defendant committed a brutal and heinous act that not only injured a child, but also undermined the safety of the community itself,” he said.

The other defendant, whom Freeman is not naming, is scheduled to be sentenced July 1.