What is this world coming to?
Three of the five teenagers charged with burning a classmate appear in court.
If this story doesn’t break your heart, you have no heart. What is wrong with our kids? There have always been bullies … and there have always been mean, sadistic kids, who get violent when they’re in a group. But somehow, the modern-day version of teen sadism seems to be getting worse. From the Miami Herald:
It began with the video game, BSO Sgt. Steve Feeley said Tuesday. Brewer owed 15-year-old Matthew Bent $40 for it and didn’t pay up. Bent tried to get even by stealing a bicycle Sunday from Brewer’s father, Feeley said. He didn’t get away with it.
The Brewer family reported the attempted bike theft to BSO, and deputies arrested Bent that night. State records show that he was charged with larceny.
On Monday, neither boy went to school.
Bent remained at home after his brief stay in a juvenile facility. Brewer skipped school, Feeley said, fearing retaliation.
That afternoon, Brewer went over to the Lime Street Apartments at 429 SE 13th Ct. to see a friend, according to BSO.
THE ATTACK
But Bent happened to be there, too, along with four other boys: Denver Colorado Jarvis, 15; his brother Jeremy Jarvis, 13; Steven Shelton, 15; and Jesus Mendez, 15. They spotted Brewer and hatched their plan, BSO said.
First, they grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol that they found along a wall in the apartment complex. Then they confronted Brewer. Bent called him a snitch. Brewer tried to walk away.
At that point, BSO said, Bent gave the order: “Pour it on him. Pour it on him.”
The boys surrounded Brewer so he couldn’t run away, Feeley said. Denver Jarvis poured the alcohol. Mendez used a lighter to set Brewer on fire.
The flames spread over Brewer’s body as he broke free and ran to the apartments’ swimming pool, jumping into the water. He left behind smoldering bushes and burn marks on the grass.
Several people helped pull Michael from the pool and called 911 shortly before 3:15 p.m. Medics arrived, and he was taken by helicopter, first to Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale and then to Jackson Memorial HospitalMedical Center inMiami.
And from the Sun Sentinel, photos of the baby-faced suspects in court. And the mother of one of the suspects expresses her regrets:
DEERFIELD BEACH – The mother of one of the teens accused of setting a 15-year-old boy on fire said she feels sorry for the victim, WFOR-Ch. 4 reports.
“I feel so sorry for [Michael Brewer], I really do. And it’s sad. It really is,” said Patricia Hollis, the mother of 15-year-old Steven Shelton of Deerfield Beach. “…My prayers go out to him and his family.”
Shelton is accused along with four others of attacking Brewer on Monday afternoon. Hollis said that her son did not have anything to do with the incident, despite a police report that states that Shelton admitted to being a part of the group that approached Brewer.
“As far as I know, no he didn’t,” Hollis told WFOR. “Wrong place at the wrong time.”
Brewer’s burns have worsened since he was admitted to the University of Miami-Jackson Memorial Burn Center, where he is in critical condition, his family said today.
The burns on his hands and feet have gone from second degree to third degree, relative Danny Martinez said.
“He’s stable and awake but his burns are getting worse,” Martinez said.
The teenage squabble involved a video game and a bicycle. It blossomed into revenge during a chance encounter and ended in the near-fatal torching of Brewer, who lives in Deerfield Beach, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.
Some of the teens charged in the blaze laughed when investigators confronted them about the attack, the Sheriff’s Office said.
And the Sentinel interviews the burn victim’s family:
Meanwhile, another set of sick teens, who gang raped a mom in front of her 12-year-old and forced them to perform a sex act, were sentenced to life.
WEST PALM BEACH – Citing the depravity of the gang rape and torture of a mother and her son, 12, in the Dunbar Village Apartments, Circuit Judge Krista Marx on Tuesday sentenced three of the four men involved to life in prison.
It was the only appropriate disposition, the judge said.
The standing-room-only crowd gasped in disbelief. As deputies led the men from the courtroom, a scuffle ensued between defendant Tommy Poindexter and an officer. A woman in the crowd began screaming and in an instant there was more yelling.
The 13-year-old brother of defendant Jakaris Taylor rushed the door they led Taylor out of and was tackled and handcuffed by deputies as the boy sobbed. He was let go minutes after the chaos.
It was the end of a 2 1/2-year-old case that shook the community.
Poindexter told the court Tuesday during the sentencing phase of the June 2007 gang rape case that it was a robbery that got out of hand.
Poindexter, 20, and two of his three co-defendants, Taylor, 18, and Nathan Walker, 19, came to Marx’s courtroom Tuesday to learn their fate for the vicious attack involving up to 10 masked men at the rundown public housing complex in West Palm Beach.
The case made international headlines for its brutality: The mother was raped and sodomized for hours at gunpoint, she and her son were forced to engage in a sex act, and both were beaten and doused with household chemicals in an attempt to cover up DNA evidence.
The defendants told stories of brutal, troubled childhoods, but the judge pointed out that nothing can excuse that kind of depravity. No kidding.
And lest you think it’s only the kids who are sick, what to say about the nurse who reused IVs and potentially exposed more than 1,800 people to Hepatitis and HIV?
Again, what is our society coming to?
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4 Responses to “What is this world coming to?”
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Have you tried searching the Broward County Clerk of Court’s site? Public access, search “Denver Jarvis” — turns out, dad’s record answers a lot of questions. He even got hit with truancy charges last year — presumably because the kids weren’t going to school.
Explains a lot. Thanks!
Maria Schneider
Assistant State Attorney
State Attorney’s Office
201 Southeast Sixth Street – Room 640
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
Re: Michael Brewer
Dear Attorney Schneider:
I write to urge you to do such as you can to see to it that the persons who attacked Michael Brewer are tried and punished as adults. The crime those five fiends committed is such as shocks even the most jaded and cynical mind.
In September, I had occasion to be in Broward County visiting my mother in law and calling upon an attorney who had done work for the Boston private bank of which I am trust counsel and senior fiduciary officer. As I drove north on A1A to my September 24 lunch meeting in Delray, neither I nor Michael Brewer had any idea that his body and his person had but 18 days to remain as God had seen fit to create it. That child didn’t know that he has soon to be set upon by The Manson Family of Deerfield Beach.
I suggest to you that the inference is irresistible that those five thugs intended not to kill Michael but to terrify, mutilate and disfigure him, leaving him alive as a constant reminder and warning to any others as to the price to be paid for crossing them. Had they wished to kill Michael, they could have obtained a gun (their kind has easy access to firearms) or a knife. Instead, they chose to commit upon Michael an unforgivable and atrocious act.
The element of premeditation to commit grievous bodily injury (indeed the abuse of a child under Florida law) is apparent from the fact that the thugs knew the injury they planned to inflict upon Michael could be made much, much worse by the use of a chemical agent. They bought or more likely stole a bottle of methyl or isopropyl alcohol and devised the plan to surround Michael, douse him with its contents, and set him alight. No one is going to believe that they found a bottle of alcohol outside the Limetree Village Apartment building.
I’ve some familiarly with the nature of burn injuries. Before I became fiduciary counsel to bank trust departments, I was with a firm that handled personal injury cases. One of those cases involved a young girl who had been severely burned in an apartment fire in Lynn, MA, just north of Boston. The girl was treated at Massachusetts General Hospital and The Shriners Burns Institute by the late John Remensnyder, MD. I recall Dr. Remensnyder’s telling us that the burn injury was the most horrific traumatic insult that the human body suffers. To this day, almost 30 years later, I recall his describing the process of “debriding”, that is, the scraping away of the outer layers of damaged skin so as to allow the process of restoration to proceed. He said that the screams from his patients were such as could wake the dead.
What those thugs did to Michael Brewer has to be punished and punished severely. As I noted above, you have a Manson Family on your hands. Look into the eyes of Denver Colorado Jarvis to see that there is no soul there…no compassion and no mercy. The Manson Family of Deerfield Beach will strike again, unless they are stopped.
If you want to get some idea of the pain these thugs intentionally visited upon Michael Brewer, try removing a slice of toast from a toaster before the heating element has cooled. If you are really daring, place a drop of rubbing alcohol in the palm of your hand and ignite it. Now image that sensation occurring over 65% of your body and imagine further a recovery process that will continue for at least 5 months, fully 1/6 of the duration of the Siege of Stalingrad during the Second World War.
Edmund Burke, the 18th century philosopher and Member of Parliament who supported the right of the United States to be independent, observed that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing. John Kennedy noted that, in this world, God’s work must truly be our own. These two notions underscore the fact that we will get the kind of society we deserve.
I realize this has been a long letter, but the matter is most grievous, most grievous. I leave with a thought I can’t get out of my head
1. these thugs planned to and did use a volatile hydrocarbon to set a child on fire
2. these thugs planned to and did use a volatile hydrocarbon to set a child on fire.
3. THESE THUGS PLANNED TO AND DID USE A VOLATILE HYDROCARBON TO SET A CHILD ON FIRE.
Charge and prosecute them as adults. We will get the kind of society we deserve.
Sincerely,
Richard E. Savoy
Cc:
Office of State Attorney
Michael J. Satz
Broward County Courthouse
201 SE 6th Street
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301-3360
Keep up the great work! Look forward to reading more from you in the future. I think it will be also nice if you add “send to email” tool so people can forward the articles to their friends easily.