Mother of injured youth wants assailants in prison

Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2003 | 9:06 a.m.

The mother of the 17-year-old boy whose face was crushed wants alleged 311 Boyz gang members to go to prison.

Tanner Hansen has been recovering from multiple surgeries and needs more of them to rebuild his crushed face after teens threw a 5-pound rock through the window of a truck.

Police say members of the 311 Boyz, a gang made up of teens from middle class and upper-middle class homes in northwest Las Vegas, were behind the attack.

Hansen's mother, Carma Mahn, said on the television show "Face to Face With Jon Ralston" Monday that what bothered her most was that some of the teens were waiting for her sons just outside the walls of a gated community.

A Clark County grand jury last month indicted nine teens on 13 felony counts stemming from the attack on Hansen. The charges include three counts of coercion, six counts of battery, three counts of attempted murder and one count of mayhem, all with use of a deadly weapon.

The teens charged are Ernest Bradley Aguilar, 17; Steven Gazlay, 18; Jeff Hart, 17; 16-year-old twins Anthony and Brandon Gallion; Mathew Costello, 17; Christopher Farley, 18; Dominic Harriman, 19; and Scott Morse, 18.

"I think they need to serve time," Mahn said, adding that she also needs help paying the hospital bills.

The rock shattered the left side of Hansen's face, crushing his sinus cavity, cheekbone and eye socket. The rock also broke his arm.

Several titanium plates now secure the bones of Hansen's face, and his mouth was wired shut in the weeks after the July incident. The Cimarron-Memorial High School student has undergone three surgeries and more are scheduled.

"I don't think they would have cared what happened," Mahn said of the teens accused of attacking her son. "They were out to hurt somebody. I don't think they are upset for Tanner. I think they are upset because they got caught."

The teens are being charged as adults. Nevada law allows children 8 and older charged with murder, attempted murder and other violent crimes to be automatically certified as adults.

Mahn is hoping that the teens responsible for her son's pain are punished if the cases reach court, although there has been talk of plea bargains.

"I would like to see justice served," Mahn said, "that there's a stand made that we as a community will not take this kind of behavior."

Hansen's attorney, Jerome Bowen, called for a harsh penalty.

"We'd like the maximum," Bowen said. "What has been done to Tanner cannot be undone. Sadly, he'll never be the same."

Asked by Ralston on Monday to put herself in the shoes of the parents of the boys accused in the attack, Mahn said: "I sat and watched all nine of these boys and felt sorry for those parents. Then I walk back in the door and I see my son, and he'll never be the same."

Bowen added, "We know what they were thinking when they came back over the wall: They were jubilant."

Throwing the rock that hit Hansen through the windshield was "not a 7-year-old boy throwing a stone at a mailbox," Bowen said.

"That is not juvenile conduct; that is serious, serious conduct," Bowen said. "A lot of murders happen that way, in the heat of passion."

Detectives in Metro Police Police's Gang Unit say the teens are admitted members of a gang called the 311 Boyz. They say the gang terrorized northwest Las Vegas neighborhoods near Centennial High School during the summer months and even captured some of their violent acts on videotape.

Mahn said her son thought the 311 Boyz was a band, until a member of the gang visited him at the hospital and explained it to him.

"What I see in the tapes is criminal activity, horrendous activity," Bowen said. The attorney said he considers the 311 Boyz a gang.

"If the rock had been higher or lower on Tanner's head, he would have been dead," Bowen said.

Bowen also represents Craig Arnett Lefevre and Joe Grill, who were at a party in a Summerlin neighborhood with Hansen the night of the attack. The teens were targeted, police said, because they were not members of the gang.

Gazlay, who spoke to the Sun earlier at his attorney James Buchanan's office, tells a different version of the events that occurred that night.

And Buchanan has said that the 311 Boyz should not be considered a gang because gangs are associated with criminal activity.

He said that police have "blown (the incident) way out of proportion" by unfairly labeling the teens as a gang and unfairly characterizing them as a group of dangerous thugs.

Gazlay, a 2003 graduate of Cimarron-Memorial High, denied that he was a member of the 311 Boyz or that he was a member of a racist group. Authorities allege that "311" represents KKK because K is the 11th letter of the alphabet.

Gazlay said other teens told him that some of the boys made up the name while on a ski trip to Brian Head, Utah, but that the teens were not a gang and not associated with the Ku Klux Klan.

Gazlay said he attended a gathering with about 50 to 60 teens in a cul-de-sac in the gated community of Canyon Terrace in Summerlin on July 18 when Hansen was attacked.

Gazlay said he was sitting on the tailgate of a truck and talking to friends when he heard screaming and yelling behind him.

He said a fight broke out between a teen and a passenger in the truck over one of the teens' girlfriends. Gazlay would not specify which teen was involved in the fight, but authorities allege it was Costello who attacked Lefevre.

Gazlay denied the police allegation that he sat on the tailgate of the truck to prevent the three teens from leaving the party.

At some point Lefevre revved his motor and "tried to show off" by putting his truck in reverse, Gazlay said. In doing so, he hit another teenager and also hit a parked truck. The teenager was not injured, according to police.

After the truck hit the teen, Gazlay said, the crowd of teens became angry and tried to stop Lefevre from leaving in order to get the license plate number.

He said he was sure, however, that the teens involved did not intend to hurt Hansen and that he sympathized with Hansen.