Teen-Ager Gets 8 Years in Racial Attack

An Oxnard teen-ager who stabbed a black reggae musician in a racially motivated attack was sentenced Friday to eight years in a juvenile detention facility.

Robert Reeves, 17, sat quietly throughout the brief court hearing, but his eyes appeared red from crying. In the audience two teen-age girls wept during the sentencing.

Also in the courtroom was Kerry Leonard Boles, 37, the victim of the Jan. 30 attack near the Ventura Pier. He left the courtroom without comment after the sentencing.

Reeves pleaded guilty last month to assault with a deadly weapon. He also admitted special allegations that the crime was racially motivated and that he inflicted great bodily injury to Boles--charges that account for five years of his sentence.

Boles was stabbed in the abdomen after being bombarded with racial epithets as he sat with a white woman. Reeves ordered the couple from the area and then chased and stabbed Boles, according to court documents.

In a March 22 letter to the court, Reeves said he was too drunk to know what he was doing during the incident. But according to court records, Reeves told a probation officer he has belonged to a Ventura white supremacist gang since 1992 and needs “racial help” while he is incarcerated.

“I have a big problem,” Reeves is quoted as having said. “Look what I did. I almost killed somebody.”

At the sentencing hearing, Deputy Public Defender Todd Howeth urged Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath to impose the minimum sentence of six years. Howeth said the shorter term was justified because of Reeves’ age and the fact that he accepts responsibility for his actions.

Reeves, in his letter to the court, also sought leniency.

“This case has also basically scared me enough to where I doubt I will have any further altercations after I get done with this and released,” Reeves wrote.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Kim G. Gibbons, though agreeing Reeves was entitled to some consideration for pleading guilty, urged an eight-year sentence for the teen-ager. Gibbons noted that the attack was unprovoked and that Boles tried to run away to avoid Reeves.

“This is an extremely serious crime, even putting aside the racial nature of the attack,” Gibbons said.

As for Reeves blaming alcohol, the prosecutor noted that “he wasn’t so drunk he couldn’t catch the victim” during the chase.

Reeves initially was charged as a juvenile, but in February a judge ruled he should be prosecuted as an adult because of the serious nature of the crime and the failure of earlier attempts to rehabilitate him through Juvenile Court.

Court documents show that Reeves’ criminal record began at age 12, when he burglarized a neighbor’s home and stole $600. A year later he stole a cassette player from a car, and in 1992 he attempted to burglarize another vehicle, according to court records.

Since his incarceration on the stabbing, Reeves, whose schooling essentially stopped after eighth grade, tried three times to write letters to friends with instructions to intimidate an informant in the case, court records show.

“Tell (name) and (name) to deal with him for me so he don’t talk,” Reeves wrote in one of the letters.

Gibbons said the correspondence was confiscated before it was mailed.

Although Reeves was prosecuted as an adult, Gibbons agreed with a probation department recommendation that the teen-ager serve his sentence in a California Youth Authority facility instead of state prison.

The prosecutor said CYA emphasizes rehabilitation more than the prison system does.

Court documents state Boles has not been able to work since the attack. Gibbons said that though Boles has recovered physically from the stabbing, there still are emotional issues with which he must deal.

“He’s upset because this has had a more significant impact on his life than merely the physical injury,” the prosecutor said.

CYA officials can keep Reeves in custody until he is 25, but he can be released earlier if they feel he has been rehabilitated. If he had gone to prison, Reeves would have been released from custody after four years.