SAN JOSE
– Three Gilroy High School students accused of making a prank
death threat against their cooking teacher cannot be charged as
adults, according to the prosecutor who supervises juvenile
cases.
SAN JOSE – Three Gilroy High School students accused of making a prank death threat against their cooking teacher cannot be charged as adults, according to the prosecutor who supervises juvenile cases.
“These offenses, while serious, are not – when compared with murders, rapes and carjackings – fit to be heard in adult court,” deputy Santa Clara County district attorney Kurt Kumli said.
Gilroy police say one of the suspects, a girl masking her voice to sound like a male, called 9-1-1 Friday and told emergency dispatchers she had a gun, was at GHS and planned to shoot her cooking teacher. In fact, police said, the two girls and one boy did not have any weapons and were calling from a fast-food eatery on First Street.
The prank, as Gilroy police described it, prompted heavily armed police to swarm the school and lock it down for nearly three hours Friday morning.
To charge the three 17-year-olds as adults would require a “fitness hearing,” Kumli said, in which the following criteria would be considered:
• criminal sophistication
• the gravity and circumstance of the alleged crime
• the defendants’ prior contacts with the justice system
• their success in previous efforts at rehabilitation
• whether they could be rehabilitated before they turn 21.
This crime does not meet these criteria, Kumli said – an assessment he said was based on “decades of experience” going back to the beginning of the county’s existing juvenile justice system.
Police, prosecutors and court officials are withholding the students’ names because they are minors. Kumli and court officials also are withholding the nature of the charges his office filed against the students Monday.
