By Colleen Jenkins, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
TAMPA — Days before their trials were set to begin, two remaining defendants in the Walker Middle School sexual battery case pleaded guilty in court Wednesday to lesser charges.
Neither will spend time in jail.
Raymond Price-Murray, 15, and Diemante J. Roberts, 16, pleaded guilty to one count each of felony battery.
Prosecutors agreed to drop sexual battery charges.
The two must serve five years of probation and complete 100 hours of community service, at least half of that speaking to students about hazing and bullying. If they complete the terms of the plea agreement, adjudication will be withheld.
"In this case, the bullying was horrific," said Hillsborough Circuit Judge Emmett Lamar Battles, who approved the agreements.
"How terrible what that victim suffered."
The victim was not in court Wednesday. No one answered the door at his family's home.
The defendants were accompanied by their mothers.
Both drew punishments more severe than those meted out to two other teens in the same case.
Lee Myers and Randall Moye, both 15, have already entered into agreements with the state on reduced felony battery charges. Moye now faces juvenile sanctions, and Myers was allowed to enter a pretrial intervention program.
The four teens were charged as adults in June 2009 with four counts each of sexual battery.
Authorities said they subjected a 13-year-old flag football teammate to a two-month reign of terror. They were accused of raping him with a broomstick and hockey stick in the locker room.