Lynn beating suspects’ school fates up in air

LYNN – Principals at the city’s three public middle schools will decide as early as today if four of the youths charged with severely beating a Guatemalan man in July should start school or face indefinite suspension.Breed, Marshall and Pickering middle school principals will review the facts of the assault case and the charges filed against the children and make their ruling before Sept. 9, the day students return to school.”A decision on the students’ status in school is imminent. It will be made within the week,” said School Attendance and Discipline Specialist Richard Iarrobino.The four students are part of a group of six kids police charged with beating Damian Merida, 30, on the afternoon of July 22 with bricks, bottles and sticks as he lay in the undergrowth bordering the commuter rail tracks and Robert McManus Field.Merida was hospitalized with serious head trauma and other extensive injuries for nearly a month in Massachusetts General Hospital before being moved to a physical rehabilitation center in Tewksbury for treatment.In the week following the attack, police arrested an 11 year old, a 12 year old, three 13 year olds and a 14 year old.The boys, all Lynn residents, pleaded not delinquent in Juvenile Court to charges of armed assault to murder, assault to maim, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and civil rights order violations resulting in injury.Police in statements released after the arrests said the boys targeted Merida for the beating because of his ethnicity. They also said they were investigating an assault on another Guatemalan and “the possibility that the attack was not the first perpetrated by these youths.”The 14-year-old remains in state Youth Services custody while the middle school age boys were released from state custody and ordered to wear electronic monitoring bracelets. The academic status of the youngest boy is unclear.The classroom status of the four is in question because a relatively new state law allows principals to weigh a student’s admission into school against outstanding criminal charges brought against the student outside of school.The law allows the principal to suspend a student after determining the student’s continued presence in school would have a substantial detrimental effect on the general welfare of the school.If the principals decide to indefinitely suspend the middle school students, their parents have the right of appeal to School Superintendent Catherine Latham. Latham can uphold, overturn or alter the principals’ decision or recommend alternative educational programs for the students.