Mother 'dumbfounded' over plea deals for juveniles accused of fatally attacking her son in high school mob brawl

A memorial for Jonathan Lewis Jr. is set up in an alleyway near Rancho High School in eastern Las Vegas, Nov. 21, 2023 (AP Photo/Ty O’Neil).

The mother of a Nevada 17-year-old who was beaten to death in an alleged bullying incident outside of a Las Vegas high school last November says the teens accused of killing her son are being allowed to “get away with murder ” since they will not be prosecuted as adults.

“You cannot jump in a human being’s head, stomp on him, and think that they’re going to remain alive after,” Mellisa Ready, the mother of the late high schooler Jonathan Lewis, told Las Vegas CBS affiliate KLAS. “They knew he was going to die, and that’s how I feel — and they’re letting them get away with murder.”

Ready said she was “dumbfounded.”

As Law&Crime previously reported , nine individuals were arrested in connection to Lewis’ death just off the Rancho High School campus last year. The defendants were ages 13 to 17 years old at the time of the alleged crime.

Four of those individuals have struck a plea deal with prosecutors at the Clark County District Attorney’s Office where they agreed to plead guilty as juveniles to manslaughter, KLAS reported. Law&Crime is not identifying the teens because they were prosecuted as juveniles.

“There is no justice for my son Jonathan Lewis, that was stomped to death and murdered while 20 people stood there and did nothing more than film it and broadcast it to social media,” Ready said of the deal, claiming she was told recently the defendants would plead guilty to murder and that most would be incarcerated in the adult prison system for at least two years.

The plea deal was revealed publicly during a Clark County court hearing on Thursday. Lewis’ mother said she was not notified of the hearing.

“I would’ve disagreed with the deal entirely. They should be accountable as adults — they made an adult choice. They knew that when they were stomping on my child’s head. That he was going to die as a result,” Ready told KLAS.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told The Associated Pres s that while they acknowledged the pain Ready was feeling, he said she was informed last week about the plea deals.

The violent attack was caught on video and widely spread on social media. Though many of the teens who beat Lewis were Black or Latino and Lewis was white, police and prosecutors have said there was no evidence that a hate crime occurred. Investigators said the attack allegedly began as a fight over wireless headphones believed to be stolen from one of Lewis’ friends. There may have also been a dispute over a vape pen possibly meant for marijuana. A website set up by the late teen’s family to honor him claimed Lewis was helping a “smaller child who was being bullied.”

An attorney for one of the defendants told KLAS that upon evaluating “all the evidence as a whole,” it was a “mutually beneficial negotiation” that led prosecutors to make the deal.

“Obviously, what occurred is a tragedy, but convicting these young men of murder would be a second tragedy, following the first,” defense attorney Robert Draskovich said.

He also told the AP the plea deal would enable his client to “graduate high school, move on with his life and become a productive citizen.”

Draskovich said he anticipates asking for his client’s release from custody with credit for time already served, though he acknowledged that his client did kick Lewis while he was down on the ground during the recorded Nov. 1 altercation. Video evidence presented at trial would have shown, he claimed, that one of the people with Lewis that day had a knife.

As for the five other teens involved, four already pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges and were tried as juveniles.

Law&Crime reported in November that a detective assigned to investigate Lewis’ death said video footage of the beating showed Lewis removing his shirt and getting off just one punch before the melee erupted.

“The minute a punch is thrown, 10 subjects immediately swarm [Lewis] and begin kicking, punching and stomping on him,” Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lieutenant Jason Johansson said.

Investigators said Lewis was found unconscious in a back alley near Rancho High School after the fight. He was badly beaten and carried from the alleyway back into the school to receive CPR before he was transported to a hospital. School officials did call 911 for assistance.

Lewis succumbed to his injuries and died while hospitalized on Nov. 7.

Law&Crime’s Jason Kandel contributed to this report.

The post Mother ‘dumbfounded’ over plea deals for juveniles accused of fatally attacking her son in high school mob brawl first appeared on Law & Crime .