“Joshua is not that person,” Reddin’s mother said, after seeing the video for the first time.
“That’s really not him,” McKnight’s dad said. “That’s not his character.”
“If someone had told me that, and I had not seen that, I wouldn’t believe it,” said Khemradj’s grandfather, who is raising the boy.
CLEARWATER — There was a Jeykll and Hyde quality to Thursday’s court proceedings, where three 15-year-old boys pleaded guilty to beating a 13-year-old student on a school bus last month.
The boys appeared remorseful and respectful, their heads sometimes bowed.
It was all “Yes, sir” and “No, sir,” sometimes in unison, as Circuit Judge Raymond Gross painstakingly asked them a series of questions after their attorneys announced the trio would be pleading guilty in the July 10 beating.
But then Assistant State Attorney William Schopper asked that the video of the attack — the one that’s gone viral and turned the Gulfport school bus assault attack into a national story — be shown before Gross decided on a punishment.
In it, one of the boys, Joshua Reddin, is seen sitting behind the victim, snarling expletives. Soon, another boy, Julian McKnight, moves from his assigned seat, toward the back of the bus, to the front, near the victim. The pair pocket their cell phones and straighten out their clothing before they and the third boy, Lloyd Khemradj, pounce on the victim. (more…)
