SAN FRANCISCO - An errant spitball that put a fellow student in the hospital with an eye injury could land a 13-year-old California boy in juvenile prison for up to eight years on two felony convictions.
"I feel bad about it, and I'm sorry," Jeffrey Figueroa told the San Francisco Chronicle, which on Wednesday reported his run-in with the law.
Figueroa has admitted that he shot the spitball -- a gum wrapper moistened with saliva -- on the first day of school last September at a middle school in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, California.
Jeffrey said he was not aiming at anybody in particular. But the spitball hit a 14-year-old boy in the right eye, requiring a trip to the hospital and surgery.
Jeffrey and his 14-year-old brother Stephen, who allegedly urged Jeffrey to fire the spitball, both were charged with battery causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury, and mayhem.
Last Tuesday, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Araceli Ramirez found Jeffrey guilty of battery causing serious bodily injury and mayhem, both felonies. His brother was found guilty on a lesser charge.
The Chronicle said that Jeffrey, who has had two heart surgeries and has Attention Deficit Disorder, now faces a sentence of up to eight years in a California Youth Authority prison when he is sentenced next month.
"What we have is an unfortunate accident with injury to a child, but what one time had been horseplay has now been, by the D.A. (district attorney), elevated to felony status, just on the basis of the unfortunate outcome of an accidental act," said attorney Marek Reavis, who is representing Stephen Figueroa.
The district attorney's office declined to comment on the Figueroa case on Wednesday, saying that because it dealt with juveniles the court records had been sealed.
But Jeffrey Figueroa's mother, Yvette, told the Chronicle her son's possible prison term came as a shock.
"All along we've had a lot of confidence that the judicial system would actually prove that Jeffrey and Stephen were innocent in this," she said. "We're totally in shock that they've been overcharged for something that was a terrible accident."
