HINTON, W.Va. (AP) - Like many parents, Summers County resident James Kessler, 40, can remember senior pranks going on at area high schools when he was a kid.
Playing one last joke on a favorite teacher or principal has been a time-honored tradition for many graduating seniors who are leaving behind their high schools and communities for college and work.
Online sites for teens and adults - Buzzfeed, CafeMom, Seventeen, even the “catalog of ideas” site Pinterest - boast headlines like “26 of the Most Epic Senior Pranks of All Time” and “13 Senior Pranks Even the Principal Will Laugh At.”
On May 1, the tight-knit communities of Summers County High School in Hinton were rocked by school officials’ discovery of damage inside the local school. Within two days, West Virginia State Police had arrested nine 18-year-old SCHS seniors - Jay Hess, Kegan Hartwell, Brittney Justice, Whittney Justice, Dacota Thomas, Jonathan Kessler, Ashton McNicholas, Dakota New and Travis McMillion - for their alleged participation in what school officials report was around $9,000 worth of damage to the school.
The arrests of the nine students have caused the small communities surrounding SCHS to talk, and residents report that neighbors disagree on what they believe would be a suitable consequence for the students’ alleged actions.
“I heard that it was supposed to be a little prank, take the desks and move them around in there, move a couple little things around, and then it went to the extreme of what they said was the painting and the ’other,’” said Kessler, who is the uncle of one of the arrested seniors. “Yeah, they need to be prosecuted.
“But how many years, how many schools, how many counties, how many states does that senior prank?
“This time a couple of them went too far. That’s my feelings about it.”
While a large number of residents are calling the students’ actions a “senior prank gone wrong,” West Virginia State Police and Summers Prosecuting Attorney Kristin Cook are taking legal action to address the damages and attorneys’ fees.
“This was way more than just a ’prank,’” Cook said. “This was a crime.”
Summers County High (with around 400 students, according to US News) has been the only high school in the district since 1995.
Cook said she understands why the Summers High case has struck a chord in the community.
“It is very emotional,” she said. “The community has an emotional attachment to the school.”
Cook, who served as an assistant prosecuting attorney before being elected prosecutor in 2016, said she’s also heard the public reaction.
“You’ve got two different views going on in this county, either hang ’em high or let them go,” she reported.
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According to legal officials, a high school principal called West Virginia State Police when she discovered the damage early May 1.
When West Virginia State Police Sgt. David McMillan entered the school, he said, he discovered overwhelming damage to the classrooms of head boys’ Bobcat basketball coach Robert Bowling and Lady Bobcat basketball coach Sarah Blevins.
Criminal complaints filed in Summers Magistrate Court report that students had painted profanity on an auditorium curtain, had splashed paint on wooden floors in the auditorium and had minimally vandalized an art room.
On Coach Blevins’ desk, a student had defecated.
Court documents read that $1,000 in cash was missing from Bowling’s classroom.
McMillan said Friday that $400 was located after the criminal complaint was filed, but $600 remains missing.
“If you had seen the room, you would understand why we couldn’t find the $400 initially,” he said. “If you put six grown men inside a building and say, ’Do as much damage as you can, and when you have to go to the bathroom, go where you want,’ that’s essentially what the room looked like.”
According to police statements, Blevins’ and Bowlings’ classrooms appeared to be the main targets.
Video surveillance showed students breaking into the school.
Working with school officials in the small, close-knit community, troopers quickly identified the students.
“When you have video footage of six 18-year-old individuals using brute force to break into somebody’s back door, regardless of whether you have stolen money or torn curtains, they just committed breaking and entering,” McMillan said. “It’s not OK.”
Hess, Hartwell, Thomas, Kessler, McNicholas and Whittney Justice all were charged with felony breaking and entering, destruction of property, conspiracy to commit breaking and entering and conspiracy to commit destruction of property.
Brittney Justice, New and McMillion were charged with breaking and entering and conspiracy to breaking and entering, although they did not enter the school, Cook reported.
McMillan obtained warrants and arrested the students during the working hours of magistrate court instead of taking them to jail overnight.
“I didn’t want to scar them for life,” McMillan said. “That wasn’t my intention.
“I care about these kids,” he added. “I don’t want to ruin their lives, but I also don’t want to be dealing with them 15 years from now.
“I told them what their bond would be, in advance, in hopes of them not going to Southern Regional Jail,” he added. “I told them, ’Look, you’re going to be back here in several years and be able to say there was a pivoting moment in your life. Either you pivoted in the right direction or you pivoted in the wrong direction,’” he recalled. “I want to do everything I can to make sure you 18-year-olds pivot in the right direction.’”
On May 2, Prosecutor Cook and McMillan held a press conference to announce the arrests and charges against the students, all of whom are 18 years old.
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Summers resident Alandra Hinkle, 24, grew up in the area. Although she was homeschooled, many of her close friends attended the local high school.
Hinkle questioned officials’ decision to publicize the arrests.
“Overall, we were just incredibly embarrassed and really ashamed that the students at the high school would act in that way,” explained Hinkle. “The fact that it was so widely covered by the many media outlets just widely amplified that… Whenever media gets involved with something like that, it definitely blows it out of the water.”
Two of the seniors arrested - twin sisters Brittney Justice and Whittney Justice - were already well-known in the area as star basketball players for the Lady Bobcats. In January 2016, when Whittney Justice scored her 1,000th point against Woodrow Wilson High School, and when Brittney Justice’s 1,000th point came in a game against Princeton High, local media reported the girls’ achievements.
The twins’ arrests came two months after one local media outlet had named both athletes the “Girls’ Basketball Players of the Year 2017” and after local media reported that they would receive scholarships to West Virginia University Institute of Technology.
(A WVU-Tech spokeswoman said Friday that WVU-Tech officials are aware of the SCHS incident but declined to report on whether the girls’ scholarships will be impacted.)
Kessler said he and many others in the town were embarrassed by media coverage of the event and had theories on why the arrests were publicized.
“They didn’t go out here and rob a bank. They did not shoot nobody to get this done,” Kessler added. “I think (officials) was trying to make a point to the students, to the next graduation class that if you do bad, this is what you’re going to get.
“It’s to make a point, but they shouldn’t have ever had the kids on the news,” he added. “I don’t think the media should’ve been involved.”
Cook and McMillan defended the decision to hold a press conference. In a small town, the arrest of nine graduating seniors was sure to cause speculation and to spark questions, they said.
“I asked for all media to be down there,” Cook said. “I wanted to address it one time and let it go.
“My job is not to make an example out of anybody,” she said. “That’s not my job.
“What’s frustrating to me about this is, honestly, it’s not a hard case,” Cook added. “I’ve got tons of cases, (including) child sexual assault cases, things that are very important in this community, not the 18-year-olds who have done what they have done at the high school, and most are very regretful of what’s happened.
“This is the last case I’d want for a media circus.”
Plea hearings for Hess and Jonathan Kessler are set for June 12.
Cook said plea deals have not been offered to all of the defendants. While Hess, Jonathan Kessler, New and McNicholas have had preliminary hearings, cases for the remaining defendants are still pending in magistrate court.
Those cases are not expected to be resolved before the next grand jury date of July 18, Cook said.
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Hinkle reported there’s discussion in the community about the appropriate punishment if the teens are found guilty. She said her church has been praying that “everybody involved will have wisdom in how to deal with it.”
“Everybody seems like they are on one side of the fence or the other in Summers County,” she added. “It’s definitely been an issue of extremes for everybody.
“I think it’s a very fine balance between disciplining these kids for messing up, which they obviously did, and did intentionally, but also keeping in mind that their future depends on this.”
According to Life Strategies of Beckley founder Hamlet Smith, a licensed counselor who works with teens, adolescents’ brains are still “budding,” or developing, until they reach their 20s.
“Eighteen is arbitrary,” he said. “Each one of those cases needs to be taken into account. Where is that kid emotionally and developmentally?
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t be held accountable, by any means,” he added. “Accountability helps society, not hurts us, but I would hate to see a stupid 18-year-old kid doing something that all his buddies were doing to lose huge opportunities just because he got stupid one night.”
When dealing with adolescents, Smith said, the ideal is to correct the behavior in a way that corrects a problem and does not create a new one.
“Retribution is important,” he said, adding that he believes a lost scholarship would be “harsh.”
“Correction is what puts people back on the right path, and then, once you’ve served your time, you’re done,” he explained. “Help them get through this.
“That was stupid. We all know that was stupid, but don’t take away their chance of being a taxpayer.”
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Some Summers residents had reported to The Register-Herald that they had not witnessed while inside the high school all of the damage reported by county officials, whose early estimate of damage was “$8,000 to $10,000.”
Cook reported that $4,000 curtains in the auditorium were torn. After paying $1,200 for a used set of curtains - a find that Cook described as “miraculous” - and attorney fees of $2,500 and after making additional cleanup and repairs to the school, the cost was around $9,000, she said.
Residents also questioned why some of the involved seniors, including one of the Justice twins, participated in the May 26 graduation ceremony while others did not.
Repeated attempts to reach Summers Schools Superintendent Kimberly Rodes were unsuccessful.
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