A Maryland teenager who shot another student inside the boys’ bathroom at Montgomery County’s Magruder High School was sentenced to 18 years Thursday in a judgment designed to allow his earlier release from a youthful offender program if he does well behind bars.
“It’s not an understatement to say that was a seismic event in Montgomery County Public Schools,” Circuit Judge David A. Boynton said from the bench Thursday, adding that as a lifelong resident of the county and longtime judge, he couldn’t recall a student shooting another student in a Montgomery school.
“To even say that out loud is a stunning thing to say,” Boynton said. “And that’s because schools are supposed to be a safe haven. They’re supposed to be a protected environment, supposed to be a place where students can go and learn and not be shot at.”
Boynton said he will recommend Alston be placed in the youthful offender program at the Patuxent Institution, which typically takes six to seven years to complete, according to earlier testimony in the case, and has its own parole program that allows those detained to be released. Prosecutors had earlier agreed to recommend his placement there as part of a plea agreement with Alston’s attorney.
The defendant’s age, cognitive challenges, lack of criminal history and belief he was being threatened by other students, according to proceedings in the case, all weighed in favor of the recommendation for placement in the program.
“Sentencings are a complicated issue to deal with,” Boynton told Alston in court, “because I have to look at who you are and what you did and the impact of what you did. And in this case, that’s a complicated picture.”
There is no guarantee that Alston, now 18, will be accepted to or complete the Patuxent program. Either of those outcomes could have him going to a regular prison in the state, and possibly serving more time.
In court Thursday, the victim’s mother, Karen Thomas, spoke of sitting at her son’s hospital bedside for more than 50 days. He was on life support, underwent at least eight operations and for weeks had his intestines exposed because of swelling.
“The images of what I saw do not leave my head. I had to watch ’Dre fight for his life,” Thomas said.
She spoke of her son asking about his condition.
“It is torture for a mother to be asked by her child if he is going to live,” Thomas said. “I pretty much lied to him because we didn’t know if he was going to make it or not.”
In earlier court proceedings, prosecutors played recordings from interviews indicating that the teens had been in fistfights months before the shooting. Prosecutors also established that Alston, 17 at the time of the shooting, purchased gun parts online and that he and a friend put it together at his home.
On Jan. 21, Thomas and others gathered inside a Magruder bathroom for what they believed would be a fistfight. That’s when Alston walked in, pulled out the gun and fired, according to authorities.Students in the bathroom scattered out, making a commotion in the hallway that a school security officer noticed, prosecutors said. He went into the bathroom and found Thomas.
The officer and a school nurse then performed emergency care on Thomas. “He and the nurse essentially saved his life to prevent him from dying on the bathroom floor,” Boynton said.
Alston’s attorney David Felsen has long maintained his client felt threatened by Thomas and others and brought the gun to school for protection.
“It is fairly clear that Steven was the subject of bullying and harassment,” Felsen said Thursday. “That doesn’t justify what Steven did … But it does put it in a context.”
“When somebody of limited abilities and limited resources feels that they are under threat, that they are worried about their own safety,” Felsen added, “people do stupid, stupid — illegal sometimes — things. And that’s what Steven did.”
Felsen also read a statement written by Alston, in which Alston apologized to Thomas, Thomas’s family, Magruder and his mother.
“She moved us out of D.C., so I would be in a safer place,” Alston had written. “When things were going bad, I should have told her. I ended up making things worse.”
Alston had been held since being arrested in the case, something he referenced in his letter, telling the judge: “I know I need help to make better decisions. … Being locked up showed me that I need to think before I do.”
Thomas’s family has sued the school board and the county, alleging that officials deprived Thomas “of his right to a reasonably safe and secure public education” and did not take any action to curb earlier rising reports of violence on school grounds.
Following the shooting, Alston concealed his gun and left the bathroom undetected to a another area of the school. When the lockdown was called, a teacher helped pull him into a classroom, where he stayed for about two hours as police worked to identify the shooter.
An assistant principal, working with police, noticed a social media post that said, “Steven shot ’Dre.” He and investigators eventually found out what classroom he was inside. A SWAT team was sent there and burst into the classroom to take Alston into custody.