A Georgia prosecutor has decided to drop charges against a teenager who US police say was driving a truck that struck and killed a beloved high school teacher when a prank turned deadly, the teen\u2019s lawyer said. <\/p>\n
The victim\u2019s family had urged authorities not to compound the tragedy by prosecuting the teen driver and his friends.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old teacher, Jason Hughes, died after slipping and falling into the street as the teens started to drive away after participating in a community tradition of pranking teachers by throwing toilet paper onto his front lawn.<\/p>\n
The students had stopped and rendered aid to Hughes until emergency responders arrived. Hughes was brought to the hospital and died on March 6, the Hall County Sheriff\u2019s Office said.<\/p>\n
Jayden Ryan Wallace \u2014 the 18-year-old driver, whom his lawyer said adored Hughes and considered him a mentor \u2014 was arrested on a felony charge of vehicular homicide, and four other teens were charged with misdemeanours.<\/p>\n
Graham McKinnon, a lawyer who represents Wallace, said Friday that the charges against his client had been dropped. McKinnon said that prosecutors also dropped misdemeanour charges against the four other teens who were there.<\/p>\n
The students had gone to Hughes’ home around 11.40pm on March 6 and began wrapping his trees with toilet paper, the sheriff’s office said. The teens started to leave when Hughes came outside \u2014 his family said he had heard in advance about the prank and hoped to surprise them.<\/p>\n
McKinnon said Wallace and his friends were playing a \u201ccompetitive game\u201d that has long been a tradition at North Hall High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, there was no crime \u2014 only an extremely sad and devastating accident,\u201d McKinnon said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Vehicular homicide charges, he said, didn\u2019t make sense because Jaden didn\u2019t use his car unsafely or improperly.<\/p>\n
\u201cJaden is still grieving deeply, but he\u2019s determined eventually to carry on and live his life in a way that would make Coach Hughes proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hughes \u2014 who taught math and helped coach golf, football and baseball at North Hall High School in Gainesville \u2014 was a \u201cmentor\u201d to Wallace, McKinnon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pledge to live out the remainder of my life in a manner that honours the memory of Coach Hughes by exemplifying Christ. He will never be forgotten,\u201d Wallace said in a statement released by his family on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Hughes\u2019 family had issued a statement earlier this week saying he knew and loved the five students involved and urging authorities to drop all charges against them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a terrible tragedy, and our family is determined to prevent a separate tragedy from occurring, ruining the lives of these students,\u201d Hughes\u2019 family said. \u201cThis would be counter to Jason\u2019s lifelong dedication of investing in the lives of these children.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Georgia prosecutor has decided to drop charges against a teenager who US police say was driving a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,67,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-328786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}