By Andrea F. Siegel , andrea.siegel@baltsun.com|June 18, 2009
More details about the death of a 14-year-old Crofton boy emerged during a preliminary hearing Wednesday for one of two teenagers charged with manslaughter, as a detective said the homicide was rooted in gang rivalry, with Christopher David Jones most likely suffering a fatal blow from his attackers that damaged an artery that brings blood to the brain.
But the attorney for Javel M. George, 16, also of Crofton, maintained the charges are either "a case of mistaken identity" or the result of playful fighting between friends on the afternoon of May 30.
Annapolis District Judge Danielle M. Mosley gave prosecutors a green light to pursue the manslaughter case against George.
Prosecutors can either take the allegations to a grand jury or file a criminal information in a case that sparked an outcry over youth gangs in Anne Arundel County.
Detective Kelly Harding told a standing-room-only courtroom that six people who were either members of or associated with the East Side Diamonds, a gang in western Anne Arundel County, spotted Christopher while they were deciding whether to go to a swimming pool.
The detective said the group formed a horseshoe around Christopher, who was bicycling near his home. They confronted him "about what they had heard about him speaking negatively" regarding one or more ESD members, Harding said. Christopher was not a member of a rival local gang, The New Threat, she said, but was associated with TNT members.
Perched on his bicycle during the dispute, he was struck in the left side of the face and head by George and a 14-year-old who has been charged as a juvenile, Harding said.
Christopher pedaled about 30 feet before he fell and hit the pavement of Nantucket Drive, authorities said.
Harding said a medical examiner told her that preliminary autopsy findings show that the blows caused a hyperextension of the vertebral artery, a blood vessel which can be stretched or torn.
"The damage was done by the blows to the head," Harding said.
Kevin McCants, an attorney for George, challenged Harding's account, and Harding acknowledged that witness accounts of who hit Christopher first were conflicting. The detective acknowledged that a friend's mother backed George's alibi that he was at that family's home at the time.
After asking George to stop lying, "Mr. George said he hit Christopher but that they were shadow-boxing," she said.
McCants said police charged the wrong person, and that he would ask a judge to throw out his client's videotaped confession. McCants said George and Christopher were "amicable" and had been play fighting.
Asked after court about that assertion, Jenny Adkins, Christopher's mother, raised her eyebrows and her eyes widened.
Said Richard L. Jaklitsch, a Prince George's County lawyer serving as a spokesman for Christopher's family: "I don't treat my friends that way."
