MICHIGAN – Five Michigan teens are facing life in prison after allegedly throwing a 6-pound rock off an overpass Oct. 18, killing a passenger in a van below.
It wasn’t anything new for the teens, Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell now tells People. “There’s a continuing behavior,” Pickell says. “These [aren’t] pranks. They’re deliberate, intentional actions that knowingly could hurt people.”
He says the teens threw a tire, chair, shopping cart, and other objects off various local overpasses in the month leading up to the death of 32-year-old Keith White. On the day White was killed, Pickell says the teens threw more than a dozen rocks, damaging multiple vehicles. He says they went to McDonald’s after hitting the van in which White was a passenger.
Kyle Anger, 17; Alex Miller, 15; Mark Sekelsky, 16; Mikaydyn Payne, 16; and Trevor Gray, 15, are being charged as adults with second-degree murder and more. They pleaded not guilty on Thursday.
The situation has been shocking for the teens’ hometown because, as one person puts it, “nothing really happens in Clio,” MLive reports. “This is an extremely difficult time for our entire community,” the Clio Areas Schools superintendent says. “Many of us have a personal connection with this senseless tragedy.”
Both of Anger’s parents ran for the school board last year and Sekelsky’s mother actually won a seat. “It is sad because kids trying to have fun ruined their own lives and ruined the lives of other people,” a neighbor says.
This article originally appeared on Newser: Sheriff Says Teens Had Thrown Stuff From Overpasses Before
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