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Defense wants more specifics in Walker Middle rape case

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By TOM BRENNAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 23, 2009

Updated: 07/23/2009 07:21 pm

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Diemante Roberts

Lee Myers

Randall Moye

Raymond Price-Murray

TAMPA - The attorney for one of the four former Walker Middle School students accused of sexual assaulting a flag football teammate is questioning why investigators took weeks to have the accuser examined.

Timothy Taylor, attorney for Lee Louis Myers, one of the former students, said his client was arrested May 6 but prosecutors didn't have his teammate undergo physical examinations until June 2 and June 5.

"Why did they wait for a month?" he asked.

Taylor said investigators should have done more when the boy first made the accusations after coaches started looking into an April 30 locker confrontation.

"That evidence is gone," he said.

Myers, two other 14-year-olds, Raymond A. Price-Murray and Randall John Moye, and Diemante Roberts, 15, have been charged as adults. Each faces four counts of sexual battery in what prosecutors have described as an extended series of sexual assaults on the teammate.

Authorities say the four teens bullied the boy for weeks before raping him with a broomstick and hockey stick in a locker room at the school.

They have pleaded not guilty.

Taylor's statements came in a hearing today in which he and the attorneys for the other teens appeared before Circuit Judge Wayne S. Timmerman asking for more details about the charges.

"We want what each defendant did at each incident," Taylor said. "We want time, date and place."

Assistant State Attorney Kimberly Hindman said she would provide that information.

Taylor said the defense has been hampered by the vagueness of the charges.

Two of the charges against the teens accuse them of committing a sexual battery between March 1 and April 24; the two other charges say the crimes occurred between April 27 and April 29.

In previous hearings, Hindman said Myers and Moye held the victim down while Roberts and Price-Murray assaulted him.

The case was first investigated by school officials, who called in law enforcement. The four teens were arrested May 6.

Reporter Tom Brennan can be reached at (813) 259-7698.

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