Four teens who dropped a football-sized rock onto the moving vehicle of Ohio schoolteacher Sharon Budd from an Interstate 80 overpass will be tried as adults, a judge ruled Thursday.
"I think they should be tried as adults because I think when you're 17 or 18, you do make choices and you know what you're doing,"
Budd told ABC affiliate News Net 5 just days before the court date.
Budd suffered massive head injuries when Brett Lahr, then 18, Keefer McGee, Dylan Lahr, and Tyler Porter, then 17, dropped a 5-pound rock from a Pennsylvania overpass, which shattered the windshield of the family SUV, and struck her squarely in the face.
At the time, she was sitting in the passenger seat while her daughter, Kaylee, was driving, and her husband, Randy, was riding in the back seat. They were on their way to see a show in New York.
Budd has undergone six surgeries as a result of her injuries, as well as therapy to rehabilitate her speech. She faces a seventh surgery soon.
"If it wasn't for the miracles of modern medicine these defendants would probably be facing homicide charges,"
WNEP-TV reported that the judge said. "There is no reason the defendants shouldn't have realized the damaged they caused. They laughed when they got back in the car."
Judge Michael Sholley said further that trying the three boys who were 17 when they dropped the rock last July would get less than three years in prison under that system, whereas an adult could get up to 25 years for the most serious charge they face.
Brett Lahr, who was 18 at the time, began serving jail time earlier this month. He's submitted a no contest plea to his charge of criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.
Budd has come a long way in her recovery, and has begun contemplating a return to teaching. She previously taught language arts at Perry Local School District in Stark County.
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