Teen Calls Beating of Homeless Man 'Wrong'

Teen calls beating of transient 'wrong'

Kristen Reed
[Orlando] Sentinel Staff Writer

[published] August 23, 2007

DAYTONA BEACH [,Fla.]--Jeremy Woods wishes he had just walked away.

Instead, he punched a homeless man, initiating a fight that drew national attention to youth violence against the homeless.

The one blow could cost him more than a year in prison.

The 17-year-old pleaded no contest Wednesday to beating John D'Amico and will be sentenced next month. The plea did not come with an agreement on sentencing, but the prosecutor is recommending that Woods be sentenced as a youthful offender to 15 months in prison followed by 47 months of probation.

Woods was the last of three youths to face charges for the March 27 attack on D'Amico. The case made headlines because two 10-year-olds, Drew and Jordan, are the youngest to be charged with beating a homeless person.

"What I did was wrong," Woods told the Orlando Sentinel last week while in the Volusia County Branch Jail awaiting his court date. "I just want to go home," he said in his first media interview.

Drew and Jordan each were sentenced to spend time in a juvenile-detention facility. Drew made a deal with prosecutors and will spend at least six months incarcerated. Jordan might be in state custody until 2018. The Sentinel is not publishing the boys' last names because of their ages.

A hard life in jail

Woods said if he could go back to that day, "I would have walked away from it all."

He said the arrest was the first time he had ever been in serious trouble.

Life in jail is hard, he says. Woods goes to school, reads and watches television. He's scared about where he might end up.

His lanky frame is swallowed by the jail-issued orange jumpsuit, and he's quiet, keeping his head bowed and saying little during the visit.

Woods said he was a normal teenager who enjoyed surfing and hanging out at the beach. He played high-school football in Georgia.

"I like to have fun. I don't like to get into trouble," Woods said. "I stay on the right track -- that's what my mom always told me."

But Woods' life was on a troubling track at the time of the attack. He had come to Florida from Georgia in December to live with his mother. A week later, she was picked up on a warrant out of Georgia. She was sent to prison, but Woods doesn't know why.

Woods had left behind his ailing father, who died within a month of his arrest.

Alone in Daytona, Woods found a job and moved in with Jordan's family because the boys' mothers had been friends. He worked doing odd jobs at the Daytona International Speedway, which happened to be where D'Amico found work as a day laborer.

Woods said he didn't know D'Amico was homeless when the attack began. He said he has never had a problem with other homeless people.

"I feel bad for a lot of them because they don't have anything," he said.

The boys' case added fuel to the fight seeking stiffer penalties for attacks on the homeless and for better record-keeping of the assaults. After the attack, Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, declared Volusia the second most-dangerous county to be homeless in Florida, a state that sees more homeless beatings than anywhere in the United States.

"It's a young-person thing to attack the homeless," Stoops said, citing statistics that show 13- to 19-year-olds are responsible for nearly 70 percent of the beatings. "For whatever reason, it continues to be a problem."

Teen threw 1st punch

Woods, who was charged as an adult, said he played the smallest role in the attack with fists, stones and a cinderblock.

He said he threw the first punch in retaliation. Jordan, whom Woods lived with and regarded as his "little brother," had told him D'Amico had punched him earlier in the day.

"I didn't hit him hard enough to make him fall or put a mark on him," Woods said of D'Amico.

Then, Woods said, he left. He thought the younger boys were following, but the attack continued and a cinderblock was smashed into D'Amico's face.

The assault left D'Amico, who has adamantly denied initiating the attack, with lifelong injuries. Woods wonders what scars from the attack will linger in his life. He had hoped to complete his high-school equivalency diploma, join the Army and become a military-police officer.

"I don't know if that's going to happen anymore," Woods said.

Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel