Teen who escaped sent to new youth facility

Kim Smith

Monday, June 5, 2000 | 11:27 a.m.

One of two teenagers who took part in a daring jail escape in which a guard was beaten and a family held hostage has been sentenced to the new youth correctional center.

The 17-year-old made the break from the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center in March with the help of a 14-year-old detainee. The pair allegedly led police on a chase in a stolen car and held a mother and two children at gunpoint before being recaptured, according to court testimony Friday.

The crimes did not become public until Friday, when Family Court Judge Robert Gaston committed the older youth to the Summit View Youth Correctional Center, a maximum security juvenile prison opened last week. The judge also ordered him to attend drug and other counseling programs and pay restitution.

Gaston's decision came after Deputy District Attorney Frank Ponticello unsuccessfully argued that the 17-year-old should be transferred to adult court to face 23 charges, 13 of which stemmed from the escape and crimes committed before his re-arrest.

Ponticello told Gaston that the boy, facing 10 charges stemming from a yearlong spree of residential and auto burglaries and car thefts, was being held on March 26.

That night a 14-year-old boy overpowered a female correctional officer during the dinner hour, Ponticello said. The officer's radio was knocked away, and she was beaten severely and locked in a cell.

He said the 14-year-old then unlocked the older boy's cell, and they fled the correctional center together and hopped on a Citizens Area Transit bus.

Ponticello said the boys then stole a pickup, drove to the Valley Auto Mall and stole a BMW. Two days later a police officer spotted the stolen BMW and began chasing it, Ponticello said.

He said the older boy jumped from the car and ran to an apartment complex, where he pulled a realistic-looking BB gun and held it to the heads of a woman's son and godson, ages 3 and 6, until she let him inside her apartment.

A maintenance man was able to get the children out of the apartment, and police arrested the boy, Ponticello said.

The boy was charged with escape, burglary, coercion, extortion, home invasion and two counts each of grand larceny auto, kidnapping, battery and false imprisonment.

Ponticello asked Gaston to transfer the boy to adult court based on the seriousness of the crimes and the system's inability to rehabilitate him thus far.

Had the BB gun been a real gun, the boy would automatically be transferred into adult court, Ponticello said. The two little boys who were held at gunpoint did not know it wasn't a real gun, he said. Neither did other witnesses.

The boy admitted he burglarized more than 50 residences while on the most intensive form of probation available and facing the possibility of youth camp, Ponticello said.

The probation department also recommended he be transferred to the adult system, noting the boy has shown no remorse, continues to be disrespectful and refuses to participate in programs designed to help him, Ponticello said.

Defense attorney Paul Wommer told Gaston that the boy is suffering from a "lack of discipline, self-concern, dignity and self-worth."

Wommer asked the judge to give the boy another chance, saying that he and the boy's parents have decided the military would be the best thing for him.

The boy's mother also asked the judge to keep her son out of the adult system.

"We were successful at 16-, 17-years-old, with the Lord's help, of turning our lives around," the mother said. "We aren't what we were then."

Gaston said that although it appears the boy is on a "slippery slope," his past convictions were not that serious, and he appears to have a lot of support from his parents.

"I don't want to give up on you, I don't want to throw you away," Gaston told the boy, who will turn 18 in August.

On June 14 Ponticello will try to convince Gaston to transfer the 14-year-old into adult court.

That youth, who has past convictions for burglary, possession of stolen property and petty larceny, faces charges of escape causing serious bodily injury, battery, first-degree kidnapping, robbery, three counts of grand larceny auto, possession of a stolen vehicle, grand larceny and burglary.

The escape occurred two days before the boy was supposed to be sentenced on a parole violation.

Ponticello said the guard suffered a broken cheek bone that will require multiple reconstructive surgeries. She also suffers from nerve damage.