Condition Critical : Boy’s Throat Slashed in Teen Dispute

A Yorba Linda youth was hospitalized in critical condition Wednesday, the victim of a throat-slashing that followed a shouting match with four teen-age girls outside a Brea movie theater, police said.

Jason Charles Otto, 16, suffered severe hemorrhaging from the jugular vein and the carotid artery, the main vessel supplying blood to the brain, Brea Police Lt. Bill Lentini said. Otto probably would have bled to death had he not been brought to a hospital quickly after the attack, Lentini said, quoting emergency room doctors.

The incident began about 9 p.m. Tuesday near the Brea Mann Theatre on Imperial Highway, when Otto and a friend pulled into the parking lot and noticed the girls throwing rocks at cars, police said.

Lentini said Otto and his friend got into a loud argument with the girls. The two boys got out of the car and exchanged insults with the girls, all 16 years old. Then, two 16-year-old boys who were with the girls became embroiled in a brief fistfight with Otto and his friend, Lentini said.

Boys Pursued Him

As Otto walked away, the two other boys allegedly ran after him and, according to the police report, threatened, “We’re gonna get you with this,” before one of the youths attacked him. Lentini said investigators believe Otto was slashed across the neck with a broken bottle.

As the four girls and two boys fled, bystanders placed a T-shirt over Otto’s neck and applied pressure to the wound, trying unsuccessfully to stop the bleeding. Lentini said Otto’s friend and other witnesses rushed him to St. Jude Hospital, in Yorba Linda.

An officer pursued and caught one 16-year-old high school dropout from Brea, who was booked into county Juvenile Hall on suspicion of being an accomplice to attempted murder. The other boy remained at large, Lentini said.