Final teen charged in Quakertown ICE protest resolves her case, ending monthslong legal battle
Four other teens charged in the February melee had previously resolved their cases through diversion programs.
Bucks County prosecutors on Monday said they had resolved the case of the last teenager arrested during an anti-ICE protest in Quakertown that turned violent.
The 16-year-old girl was scheduled to stand trial Monday on misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, as well as a summary offense of obstructing traffic, according to her lawyer. Instead, prosecutors said, she agreed to enter into a diversion program in exchange for the dismissal and expungement of the charges.
The girl’s lawyer, Ed Angelo, said the agreement includes 20 hours of community service, among other things, to be completed over a 90-day period. “She is a wonderful young lady who, I think, exercised great courage,” both during the protest and throughout her criminal case, he said.
The agreement closes the last outstanding case among five Quakertown Community High School students arrested after a February demonstration against ICE escalated into a physical confrontation with the borough’s police chief and manager, Scott McElree.
The teens’ arrests sparked months of public debate over the melee, which was captured on camera by onlookers whose videos circulated widely online. One video showed McElree, who was dressed in plain clothes, grappling with a boy on the sidewalk. Another captured 72-year-old McElree placing a girl in a chokehold.
Following the confrontation, Bucks County officials said McElree had sought medical care for injuries that included fractured ribs. He also took worker’s compensation leave for several weeks before returning to work in May. And a panel of area police chiefs later cleared McElree of wrongdoing following a review of the case.
The teens were each initially charged with aggravated assault as well as misdemeanor offenses. But on Monday, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that after reviewing evidence in the case — including “video footage obtained after the initial filing of the charges” — prosecutors had dismissed the aggravated assault charges because they “were unsupported by the evidence as a whole.”
Over the last few months, prosecutors have struck diversion-program deals with the other teens that are “designed to meet the needs of each juvenile,” according to their statement.
The 16-year-old girl, who was 15 at the time of her arrest, had been the only teen whose case remained unresolved.
“She should never have been charged,” Angelo, her lawyer, said.
Angelo had previously sought to have the case dismissed outright, arguing that the allegations relied heavily on secondhand accounts and that his client had done nothing wrong.
The district attorney’s office also said Monday that it continues to investigate the conduct of Quakertown police during the protest.
That investigation began a day after the demonstration, when prosecutors were tasked with independently reviewing the department’s response. In its statement, the office said county detectives had spent the last four months gathering evidence, including video footage submitted by members of the public.
Now that all five of the teens’ cases have been resolved, prosecutors said investigators are working with defense lawyers to secure voluntary interviews with the teenagers so they can provide their accounts of what occurred.
The office did not provide a timeline for completing the investigation but said it intends to move “expeditiously” toward its conclusion.