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rdudley@islandpacket.com
BLUFFTON -- Two Bluffton High School students and an 18-year-old were arrested Tuesday morning and charged in the brutal beating of two men in a Bluffton area backyard Oct. 30.
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Theophilus Hamilton
Harry C. Battle
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All three are being charged as adults.
The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office charged Theophilus D. Hamilton, a sophomore, and Harry C. Battle, a junior, both 16, in the attack on 33-year-old Brian Lanese, who suffered serious injuries in the beating and has been hospitalized since the assault.
Kuwan A. Fields, 18, is charged in the attack on 24-year-old Jeffery Wooten, who suffered minor injuries.
The three teens were taken to the Beaufort County Detention Center, where they face the following charges:
n Hamilton — burglary; criminal conspiracy; and assault and battery with intent to kill.
n Battle — burglary; criminal conspiracy; and assault and battery with intent to kill.
n Fields — burglary; criminal conspiracy; and simple assault and battery.
Bond hearings are scheduled for this morning.
Hamilton and Battle were arrested around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at the high school. Fields turned himself into investigators around 3 p.m.
Battle's parents met with a detective in the parking lot of the Sheriff's Office about two hours after their son was arrested.
During a sometimes heated conversation, they maintained their son's innocence, saying he was at home with two younger siblings on the night of the attack.
They declined comment for this article.
A man leaving Hamilton's home Tuesday evening said the family had no comment on the arrests.
HOW IT HAPPENED In the Oct. 30 incident, the three teens allegedly went onto Lanese's property to burglarize his backyard shed in the Windy Lakes subdivision, according to a release from the Sheriff's Office.
Hamilton and Battle went into the shed while Fields acted as a lookout, according to the release. For reasons that are still unclear, the three suspects then confronted Lanese and Wooten, who had come outside to tend to some steaks they had been cooking on a barbecue grill.
According to the release, Hamilton and Battle attacked Lanese, hitting him in the head with the stock of a pellet gun, while Fields attacked Wooten.
Nothing was taken from the shed during the burglary, according to the release.
Wooten has said the three suspects wore Halloween masks similar to those in the movie "Scream" during the attack. Wooten said the suspects fled after the attack, which lasted about 30 seconds.
Lanese was hospitalized in Savannah's Memorial Health University Medical Center's intensive care unit on the night of the attack. He is scheduled to be released today.
THE INVESTIGATION The Sheriff's Office identified the suspects using DNA samples collected from evidence left at the scene and through a number of interviews with Bluffton High administrators, residents of Windy Lakes and residents of the surrounding Simmonsville and Buck Island roads neighborhood, according to the release.
Bluffton High Principal Robert Anderson would not say whether Battle or Hamilton has a history of misconduct at school.
Both Hamilton and Battle had been varsity athletes. Battle was a lineman on Bluffton High's football team until midway through this season, when the team's coach, Jeremy West, and Battle's father decided the junior should be dismissed from the team for academic reasons.
"He wasn't doing what he was supposed to be doing in school," West said Tuesday.
Battle and Hamilton were good friends, said Bluffton freshman Monique Bryant, who said she is a friend of both.
"They're really nice, but they're mixed up with the wrong people," she said after school Tuesday as she sat in the high school cafeteria. "They hang out with bad kids, in and out of school... kids that instigate them. Eventually you give in, unless (you do), they'll call you a punk..."
Little information was available about Fields. He was questioned and released earlier in the investigation.
A FEELING OF RELIEF News of the arrests was greeted with relief by several of Lanese's neighbors.
"Oh, thank God they found them," said Kathy O'Brien, who lives across the street from the Laneses.
O'Brien and her son, Jamie Paris, were victims of a home invasion about three weeks before the Lanese attack. Three men were arrested in that case within a few days.
Deputies stepped up patrols after the Lanese attack. Patrol cars rolled through the typically quiet subdivision off Simmonsville Road every half-hour or so.
Both the home invasion and attack cases were investigated by Cpl. Lou Novak.
"He deserves a little more credit than he gets," Paris said. "The cops did a really good job."
Island Packet staff reporters Daniel Brownstein, Michael Welles Shapiro and Sam McDowell contributed to this report.
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