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Luis Rivas “voluntarily waived jurisdiction of the Family Court -- which typically handles juvenile delinquency matters -- and agreed to be prosecuted as an adult” for the Oct. 22 shooting about a quarter mile from Brick Memorial High School, Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer said.
Rivas, who was taken into custody four days later, and another boy identified as the shooters remained held in the Ocean County Juvenile Detention Center, Billhimer said.
The 16-year-old victim was walking home from school with three friends when he was grazed in the arm by a shot, the prosecutor said.
The boy ran about a quarter-mile back to the school for help, igniting initial fears that there’d been a school shooting.
He was taken to nearby Ocean Medical Center and released soon after, while area schools were locked down and then sheltered in place as a precaution.
Detectives from Billhimer’s Major Crimes and High Tech Crime units reviewed surveillance video from nearby residences along with Brick Township police and the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office.
They identified Rivas and the other juvenile, the prosecutor said.
Billhimer acknowledged work on the case by Chief Ocean County Juvenile Assistant Prosecutor Anthony Pierro and Assistant Prosecutor Madeline Buczynski, as well as his Major Crime and High Tech Crime units, the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Major Crime Unit, the Monmouth County Emergency Response Team, the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office, police from Brick, Toms River, Lakewood, Bay Head, Point Pleasant and Asbury Park, New Jersey State Police and the United States Marshals Service.
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