King County prosecutors charged a 14-year-old Kent boy Wednesday with first-degree rape and first-degree rape of a child for his alleged attack on an 8-year-old girl Nov. 7 in the woods near a Kent hotel.
Prosecutors also want to charge the teen as an adult. He is scheduled to appear in King County Juvenile Court on Thursday in Seattle.
“We plan on asking the court to schedule a decline hearing,” said Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “At a decline hearing, a judge will decide whether the juvenile should be prosecuted as an adult.”
Because the boy is 14, the King County Juvenile Court will first handle the charges. A Juvenile Court judge must order adult prosecution for the boy and decline the case, which would send it to King County Superior Court.
If convicted in Juvenile Court, the boy could face incarceration up to his 21st birthday. If convicted in adult court, the sentence range could be 20 or more years in prison with a potential maximum sentence of up to life in prison.
Under Washington state law, an offender who commits a serious violent offense is automatically charged in adult court if they are 16 or 17 years old when the alleged crime occurred.
Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Michael Mohandeson wrote in court documents that the teen should be charged as an adult because of the seriousness of the alleged offense, which were committed in an aggressive, violent, premeditated or willful manner.
Mohandeson added other reasons including, “the sophistication and maturity of the juvenile as determined by the juvenile’s home, environmental situation, emotional attitude and pattern of living.”
The prosecuting attorney also said, “prospects for adequate protection of the public and reasonable rehabilitation of the juvenile by services available to juvenile court are inadequate.”
The boy attended Kent-Meridian High School before dropping out. He remains in custody at the King County Juvenile Detention Center in Seattle.
Kent Police arrested the teen Nov. 7 for investigation of first-degree rape after an 8-year-old girl on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 7, entered the Red Lion Hotel, 25100 74th Ave. S., wearing only a shirt and socks and told hotel employees she had been raped. The girl had a swollen face and scratches on her arms and legs, according to charging papers.
The girl told police she walked with the boy toward the Shell gas station before they went into a wooded area where he hurt her. When an officer asked her what part of the body the boy touched she replied, “Everything.” She said he struck her in the head multiple times. She said she had seen the boy a couple of times in recent weeks with her brother.
Paramedics transported the girl to Valley Medical Center in Renton for treatment.
Police talked to the girl’s mother and found out a possible address where the boy could be found in a neighborhood near the hotel and gas station. Officers found the teen at the house.
The boy, who turned 14 in August, told police had had sex with the girl. He said it was consensual sex and he believed she was 11 years old. He said he saw the girl and two other girls exit a school bus. He asked the girl if he could walk with her to her house to see if her brother was home. The brother was not home. The teen told police the girl asked him if he wanted to walk to the store and asked him if he wanted to have sex.
The boy told the girl he wanted to have sex and they found a spot in the bushes just south of the gas station. He admitted to police he hit the girl twice in the face because she said she would call the police.
While the teen is almost 6 feet tall and weighs 230 pounds, the girl is about 4 feet tall and weighs about 90 pounds.
During his interview with police, the boy said he first had sex at age 10 and estimated he has had sex with about 30 girls, most of them older than him. according to charging papers.
The girl during a later interview with police said that the boy pushed her down in the woods by pushing her head and then he pulled her pants off and started socking her in the face. She escaped once but he caught up to her. She later fled to the nearby hotel.
Detectives reviewed surveillance video from the hotel that showed the girl and boy reportedly walking from a parking lot toward the wooded area at the south end of the property. The video also showed the teen chasing the girl and later showed the girl walking toward the hotel. After the 8 year old walked into the lobby, she collapsed on the floor before hotel staff tended to her.
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