Teen sentenced for shooting near Graham-Kapowsin High School
A teenager who shot two students near Graham-Kapowsin High School last year has been sentenced.
Ronald Douglas Ackerson Jr., 16, pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree assault and second-degree unlawful gun possession as part of negotiations with Pierce County prosecutors. He was charged as an adult.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Ashcraft sentenced him to 13 1/2 years of incarceration.
The 16-year-old and 17-year-old boys wounded in the Dec. 5 shooting survived.
“I just want to be able to enjoy the things I used to,” one teen wrote the court ahead of sentencing. “Nothing is the same; everything hurts or causes panic and it doesn’t have to be that way.”
In his plea statement, Ackerson gave this account of the shooting:
He went with a friend off school grounds, where the friend planned to fight someone. Students gathered to watch, but the fight didn’t happen.
Ackerson and others got in a vehicle to leave, and as they drove away Ackerson fired at least six shots at the crowd from the passenger seat.
“While I do not admit that I fired the gun with the intent to inflict great bodily harm, I do admit that the gun was pointed in the direction of people when it was fired; and that I intended, and did in fact, put people in a reasonable and immediate apprehension of bodily injury,” he wrote.