Less than a year ago, 16-year-old Amy Joyner-Francis was attacked in the second-floor bathroom of Howard High School of Technology in Delaware. Her attacker, according to reports, struck Joyner-Francis without warning. Thus began a brief but violent fight that would eventually leave that young woman facing criminal charges, and Joyner-Francis, dead.
Today, the now 17-year-old teen was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree criminal conspiracy. One of the teen’s co-conspirators, also 17, was found guilty of third-degree criminal conspiracy for helping to plan the assault on Joyner-Francis and carry it out. The other was found not guilty of criminal conspiracy as video taken of the assault didn’t show her participating in the fight, aside from trying to pull the attacker off of Joyner-Francis at one point.
Joyner-Francis died soon after the melee ended when according to The News Journal, “her breathing became labored and she lost consciousness while lying on the floor in the handicap bathroom stall,” this according to testimony from witnesses and faculty from the high school. State medical examiner, Dr. Adrienne Sekula-Perlman, stated in testimony that Joyner-Francis had a hole in her heart, as well as narrow arteries that no one was aware of. The physical and emotional stress of the attack, according to her, caused the teen to have a cardiac incident that led to her death.
Another medical expert, a witness for the defense, countered Sekula-Perlman’s testimony by saying that due to Joyner-Francis’s rare heart condition, it was impossible to say whether or not the teen would have been alive today even if the attack had not occurred. But Judge Robert Coonin didn’t think any of that mattered. In his decision, he stated that despite the possibility that Joyner-Francis could have passed from a variety of stressors,” she had a right to live one more day, one more week, one more month or year until her time, without a contributing cause by another.” To him, based on the evidence, there was no doubt that her attacker had caused her death. And considering that she didn’t consider the possible risks, even of a major injury from the bathroom’s surroundings, proved negligence on the attacker’s part and that of her co-conspirator.
“The attack … posed a risk of potential catastrophic physical harm including death by virtue of the tile floor, walls and fixtures,” Coonin remarked. “Had a death resulted from internal bleeding after striking her head on the floor, would that result in any way change the risk that the assault itself created?”
This whole encounter was reportedly spurred by a misunderstanding on social media over the attacker believing she was being talked about negatively by Joyner-Francis. She, along with her co-conspirator, will be sentenced on May 23. As we reported last year, they were tried as juveniles, therefore, while the attacker could have faced up to eight years in prison if tried as an adult, she is now subject to supervision until she’s 19. Coonin will keep in mind the records of the young women, as well as the severity of the crime, before handing down his punishment.
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