DA Jumps Into Pool, Charges 15-Year-Old

(Image by Sean Fornelli, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.)

LAFAYETTE-The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office has jumped into a deep pool of controversy by charging a 15-year-old water polo athlete with felonious assault and battery, this after the athlete broke the nose of an opponent during a match.

According an article in Lamorinda Weekly, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office filed the charges earlier this month against a 15-year-old Acalanes student who allegedly broke a San Jose Bellarmine Prep player’s nose during a tournament match at Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek on Sept. 19.

The paper says no one saw the incident because it occurred away from the primary action, but that after a video surfaced, the boy was suspended a day from school and suspended 18 days from the Acalanes water polo team.

JV head coach Russ Stryker told LaMorinda Weekly “The bottom line is we have rules within the schools and within the leagues that take care of these kinds of disciplinary things. In my opinion, it’s not something the courts should be dealing with.”

The DA’s action was met with quick reaction.

“Generally the incident must be extreme, out of the ordinary and highly dangerous to be considered a criminal act,” Michael McCann, a law professor at the University of New Hampshire, told the Weekly.

And the Weekly cited an e-mail in which USA Water Polo pacific zone chair Andrew Morris said such events happen “hundreds of times per year.”