One can’t help but think police work has gotten a bit easier in the Internet age, especially when considering the case of a 17-year-old Chicago boy who just pled guilty to his role in the group sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl—a crime of which video evidence later surfaced on Facebook.
Scandale Fritz was one of four teens charged as adults over the attack (at the time they ranged from 15 to 17 years of age) and will serve two consecutive 13-year prison terms on two counts of aggravated sexual assault. The victim had walked to Fritz’s Englewood home on Dec. 15, 2012. Fritz, as he eventually confessed, forced himself upon her after pulling off her clothes. Justin Applewhite, Dyquier Garrett, and Kenneth Brown then allegedly took turns violating her, with Fritz filming the horrific sequence.
The following day, the victim filed a police report and checked into a hospital. Then, on Dec. 17, the damning video turned up on Brown’s Facebook account, shortly spreading to Fritz’s and Applewhite’s pages. It appeared to show “Brown waving a gun in the air during the sexual assault while all three yelled gang slogans,” according to court documents cited by a local CBS affiliate. Prosecutors said that “Fritz was identified in the video because at one point he turned the camera towards his face.”
We can’t imagine how many “likes” these boys expected for a status update of that sort, but it’s a safe bet they won’t be making more home movies anytime soon.
H/T CBS Chicago | Photo by James Cridland/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
