Four juveniles face aggravated assault charges in connection with a Tuesday incident described by Scranton police as an escalation of a dispute from the online game Fortnite.<\/p>\n
City officers responded to Foster Street near Gunster Avenue for a possible abduction. Once on scene, officers determined the incident was an assault rather than an abduction.<\/p>\n
Police issued a \u201cbe on the lookout\u201d alert for a vehicle involved in the incident. Old Forge officers spotted a vehicle matching the alert, stopped it and found four juvenile males inside.<\/p>\n
The 14-year-old victim told officers he was arguing with another gamer while playing the Fortnite online. The other gamer threatened to assault him during the game.<\/p>\n
Later, the 14-year-old was walking down the street and a vehicle stopped behind him. The four juveniles, dressed in black clothing with red bandanas, got out of the car and assaulted him with a sharp weapon, resulting in lacerations.<\/p>\n
The four suspects, ranging in age from 15 to 17, were charged as juveniles with aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and assault with a deadly weapon.<\/p>\n
Two of the juveniles were from Old Forge, one from Taylor and one from Duryea.<\/p>\n
Under state law, the names of juveniles involved in criminal cases are kept confidential.<\/p>\n
Following the arrests, Lackawanna County District Attorney Brian Gallagher said parents need to understand that their children are their responsibility and could be held legally accountable for their actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents need to start parenting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He encourages parents to know what their children are doing online, to look at their video game chats, to examine their cell phones.<\/p>\n
\u201cSee who they\u2019re texting and who they\u2019re meeting. And if you need help, get help \u2014 before it\u2019s too late and your child makes a decision that can\u2019t be undone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is this: On a random Tuesday night, four kids dressed in black with red bandannas get in a car (and) went out to assault another juvenile with a weapon over an online argument. Where were the parents? We cannot pretend we don\u2019t see it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four juveniles face aggravated assault charges in connection with a Tuesday incident described by Scranton police as an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[4862,746,41021,178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-81004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-aggravated-assault","9":"tag-juveniles","10":"tag-online-game","11":"tag-scranton","12":"tag-scranton-headlines","13":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}