Three Key West teens, all 14, are facing felony charges following their Oct. 24 arrest at Sigsbee Park Navy Base for charges that include false imprisonment, aggravated assault and burglary. The charges do not include sexual assault, although the police investigation indicates some of the suspects carried out attempted acts of sodomy with a spoon on the 14-year-old victim, along with forcing a minor to watch porn from a gaming console.
Their victims were an 11-year-old girl and her 14-year-old brother who live in military housing at Sigsbee Park.
The suspects, whose names were removed from the Key West Police report due to their age, reportedly followed the 11-year-old girl home from the Navy’s MWR building while harassing her with questions about her boyfriend’s girlfriend.
The boys reportedly pushed the girl down and threatened to kidnap her if she ran away. The girl ran to her house, where her 14-year-old brother was home alone, with the boys chasing her. She found the back door of her screened-in porch locked when she arrived.
When her brother arrived at the door from inside the house, the suspects held a 10-pound metal weight from a weight bench over his sister’s head and counted backward from three, threatening to drop the weight on the sister’s head if the boy did not let the suspects inside his house.
The boy, “fearing for his sister’s safety,” reluctantly opened the door to his house and the suspects rushed inside, according to the police report. The girl then ran to a friend’s house for help.
Once inside, the three suspects reportedly forced the male victim down the hallway and locked themselves in a game room, “accessed the internet through an Xbox and began to play a pornographic video at the highest volume. The suspect then grabbed the victim by his shoulders, forced him onto the couch and held him down while they retrieved a spoon from the victim’s kitchen and “attempted to place the straight edge of the spoon into the victim’s rear end,” states the police report.
The victim thrashed and tried to evade the attackers, finally breaking free and running outside, despite his fear of what the boys would do inside his house. After the suspects broke several eggs on the walkway of the victims’ house, the victims’ mother returned home, ordered the suspects out of her house and called police.
The victims’ parents told Navy Police and then Key West Police they wanted to press charges against all three suspects. The male victim spoke with police and one of the suspects, with a parent present, confirmed much of the victim’s account, but said he tried to deter the other two suspects, who were the primary aggressors.
The three attackers were arrested and charged with aggravated assault, false imprisonment and burglary. It is unknown at this time whether additional charges could be added based on the attempted sodomy with a spoon and the airing of pornography by minors.
The incident and arrests occurred shortly after 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 24.
As of Tuesday, Oct. 31, Schools Superintendent Theresa Axford told the Keys Weekly, “We are cooperating with law enforcement to support the investigation and are reviewing placement for the students moving forward.”
But as of Oct. 31, there was no reason the suspects could not have returned to their normal classes at Key West High School pending the results of the ongoing investigation, said Deputy Superintendent Amber Acevedo.
She emphasized that the school district’s role in a case like this, when the incident occurred off school grounds and after school hours, is to cooperate with law enforcement and make plans to continue the suspects’ education, regardless of whether they end up being detained in a juvenile facility, attending alternative classes at Key West High School, where they are kept separately from the rest of the students or whether they return to their normal classes.
“One thing we’re always careful about is placing victims and aggressors together in a situation that could potentially be dangerous or difficult,” Acevedo said, adding that the law enforcement investigation is still ongoing.
State Attorney Dennis Ward told the Keys Weekly on Oct. 31 that his office had not been involved in the case yet, and added that it would be up to the school officials whether to keep the suspects out of school.
