An 18-year-old Fullerton motocross rider pleaded guilty to assaults on
women in South Dakota that could land him a year in jail and $2,000
fine.
But Brandon
Joseph Boeding is getting off easy, accepting a plea deal that
dropped a first-degree burglary charge associated with his rampage,
which included smacking a 74-year-old woman 20 times while wearing a
mask.
The burglary charge could have fetched a 25-year prison sentence.
]
Boeding entered the tent of a sleeping 15-year-old girl at the
4-H fairgrounds in Armour, S.D., in the early morning hours of July Fourth, during a 125th anniversary
of weekend festivities there. She awoke to find him on top of her with his hand over her throat, according to a report in The Republic of Mitchell, S.D.
She flipped over on her stomach, and Boeding pushed her face into the pillow, reads the original sheriff's report. She tried to yell and jar awake a friend also sleeping in the tent, which prompted Boeding to flee for a bit. He soon returned but was scared off by the girl's brother. He was seen driving off in a white minivan.
Less than an hour later, Dorothea Tesch saw the van drive through her neighborhood while taking her morning walk. She noticed the driver was wearing a mask. After walking past the van, she heard Boeding run up behind her. He wound up striking her 20 times in the head before she manged to pull of his mask. When a neighbor who heard Tesch's screams came running up, Boeding hopped back in the van and drove off.
Police later found a van matching the description of the one used by the attacker parked in front of a home with its engine still warm to the touch. No one answered the door when officers first knocked on the door, but they later returned, confronted Boeding and arrested him after the girl and Tesch positively identified him.
Police say at the time of his booking, he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.109, while the legal driving limit in South Dakota is 0.08.
He initially pleaded not guilty to one count of first-degree burglary, two counts of simple assault and one count of consumption of alcohol by a minor. On Thursday he pleaded guilty to two counts of simple assault.
Those reporting on the case in South Dakota wondered what the Fullerton teen was doing in Armour, but the July Fourth festivities there included an all-schools reunion. Armour High School students are among Boeding's Facebook friends.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.