Teens Accused In 3 State Crime Spree Transferred To Juvenile Court
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Two Ohio teens face a detention hearing Tuesday after being accused of a crime spree and dragging an Elizabeth Township police officer behind their truck earlier this year.
They were captured after they crashed a stolen pick-up truck into a car, and then crashed into a café in Sistersville.
Their case also attracted a lot of attention in the Pittsburgh area when they were suspects in the armed robbery of a gas station in Elizabeth Township. During the course of that robbery, a police officer was dragged behind their vehicle as they sped away.
But in court today, the two admitted their roles after West Virginia agreed to extradite them to Pennsylvania for the more serious charges.
"The district attorney's office agreed to decertify the juveniles and put them back into the juvenile court to have these charges adjudicated by a juvenile court," said May's lawyer, Steve Townsend. "Basically what they've done is admitted responsibility for the crimes that have been alleged that they committed, and now that that admission, so to speak, is done, the next step is to have the adjudication hearing as to what will the juvenile court do with Miss May."
Townsend thinks given their age, they have more of a chance at rehabilitation in the juvenile system. In juvenile court, their oversight ends when they turn 21.
"Well, the statutory maximum penalties on these charges if they would have been stacked together could have been well over 100 years," Townsend said. "I mean, these were serious, serious crimes: robbery, aggravated assault with police officers, the possession of firearms. I mean, they ran the whole gamut of crimes in a three-state area."
Both face a detention hearing at the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center in Allegheny County next week, but the defense hopes that they will eventually be adjudicated in the juvenile system in their native Ohio.
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