Eight Las Vegas high school students face murder charges after beating classmate Jonathan Lewis Jr. to death over a pair of headphones and a vape pen. An autopsy showed the cause of death was “blunt force trauma homicide.” The arrests, assisted by the FBI, were conducted at Rancho High School Tuesday morning. The students who participated in the November 1 deadly beating, which took place just after school let out for the day, are between the ages of 13 and 17 years old, police said in a press release Tuesday. Most of the assailants were black students and the victim was white. Police are not calling it a hate crime at this juncture. Their identities will not be released because they are juveniles, but police are working with the local district attorney to determine whether the students will be charged as adults. .Las Vegas homicide Lt. Jason Johansson said there may be two other students involved and detectives are working to identify them. When they do find the other two students, they will also face murder charges. “During the investigation we learned that the fight was over a pair of stolen wireless headphones and possibly a stolen marijuana vape pen from incidents that occurred earlier in the week,” Johansson said. “As a result of those items that were taken from the victim or the victim’s friends, they had agreed to fight with several of the subjects in the back alley where the fight occurred.”“We identified approximately 10 subjects involved in the murder” from a video circulating on social media, he said. “Eight of those subjects we were able to positively identify.”
Eight Las Vegas high school students face murder charges after beating classmate Jonathan Lewis Jr. to death over a pair of headphones and a vape pen. An autopsy showed the cause of death was “blunt force trauma homicide.” The arrests, assisted by the FBI, were conducted at Rancho High School Tuesday morning. The students who participated in the November 1 deadly beating, which took place just after school let out for the day, are between the ages of 13 and 17 years old, police said in a press release Tuesday. Most of the assailants were black students and the victim was white. Police are not calling it a hate crime at this juncture. Their identities will not be released because they are juveniles, but police are working with the local district attorney to determine whether the students will be charged as adults. .Las Vegas homicide Lt. Jason Johansson said there may be two other students involved and detectives are working to identify them. When they do find the other two students, they will also face murder charges. “During the investigation we learned that the fight was over a pair of stolen wireless headphones and possibly a stolen marijuana vape pen from incidents that occurred earlier in the week,” Johansson said. “As a result of those items that were taken from the victim or the victim’s friends, they had agreed to fight with several of the subjects in the back alley where the fight occurred.”“We identified approximately 10 subjects involved in the murder” from a video circulating on social media, he said. “Eight of those subjects we were able to positively identify.”
