Boy Laughed After Dropping Rock Onto Car on Freeway, 16-Year-Old Told Police

A 13-year-old boy hurled a chunk of concrete from a bridge onto a car passing below because he was bored, a 16-year-old boy who was also charged in the incident told San Diego police during a taped interview.

After throwing the concrete, the 13-year-old peered down to see the car careening out of control on Interstate 5 in downtown San Diego and laughed.

The tape was played Wednesday during a Juvenile Court trial for the 16-year-old, a Golden Hill resident charged with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon stemming from the Feb. 29 incident. The driver of the car that the concrete struck, a 24-year-old San Carlos man, was critically injured.

‘It’s Kind of Boring’

In a March 8 interview with Detectives Terence Degelder and Arthur Cabada, who testified during the trial, the 16-year-old said he and the 13-year-old were at a construction site near where Broadway crosses over I-5 when the 13-year-old, a Point Loma resident who has pleaded no contest to the same charges and is awaiting sentencing, asked: “It’s kind of boring, you think we ought to do something?”

The 16-year-old told the detectives that the 13-year-old then picked up the 6-pound concrete chunk and that the two walked to the south side of the overpass. The 13-year-old lifted the rock over the railing and “forcefully” threw it toward the freeway.

“He just ran across (Broadway to the other side of the overpass) to see what happened,” the 16-year-old said on the tape. “After that, he just started laughing and he walked away.”

The 16-year-old said he and the other boy saw a car swerving out of control. He said they left, returned a while later and there were “cops all over.”

“He knew he had hit a car, but he didn’t know what kind of damage he did,” the 16-year-old said.

The 16-year-old said he watched a television report of the incident the next night.

Prosecutor Robert Amador contends that more than one rock was thrown, while defense attorney Jerry Leahy claims that only one was thrown and that it possibly bounced off a car driven by a San Diego school teacher and struck the car driven by Kurt Meyering, who remains at Mercy Hospital in fair condition with severe head injuries.

Amador said the three charges stem from the three victims: Meyering; his girlfriend, Jane Casey, who was in the car with him when it was struck, and Billie Wilson, the teacher whose car was also hit.

Wilson testified before Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Kapiloff that her car was also struck by an object on I-5 Feb. 29, and that she noticed a deep dent on the roof of the car when she got home that night.

Casey, who had purchased the 1984 red Corvette about 15 minutes before the incident, testified that after the rock crashed through the sunroof she tried in vain to reach the brake with her leg as Meyering let go of the wheel after being hit.

In an interview outside the court, Casey said that, on the night of the incident, Meyering was “really excited” and insisted on driving the new car.

Casey, 22, said Meyering sometimes responds to his name when he is visited at the hospital and that visits by family and friends have helped the aspiring actor’s recovery.

She says the Feb. 29 ordeal will never be forgotten:”It’ll never be over in my eyes or Kurt’s eyes. The case will be resolved and the kids will return to their normal lives. But Kurt will still be there in a rehabilitation center. There is no ‘over.’ ”