Suspect in Honor Student’s Murder Pleads Not Guilty : Crime: Abraham Acosta, 16, of Buena Park is not fit to stand trial as an adult in the death of Stuart Tay, his attorney says. A Feb. 5 hearing is scheduled.

A Sunny Hills High School student accused of striking the first blow in the fatal attack on Stuart Tay pleaded not guilty Thursday to a murder charge.

Abraham Acosta, 16, of Buena Park was ordered to return to Juvenile Court Feb. 5 for a hearing to determine whether he should be tried as an adult. During the brief hearing on Thursday, Acosta kept his head bowed to avoid having his picture taken by news photographers.

“The media attention has upset him,” said Acosta’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Denise Gragg. “He’s depressed and having problems absorbing what’s happening to him.”

Acosta’s parents did not attend his hearing because they also wanted to avoid the media, the attorney said.

Gragg said she plans to argue at Acosta’s next court date that he is not mentally competent to stand trial as an adult. Acosta is enrolled in special education classes at Fullerton’s Sunny Hills High and Gragg said the teen-ager will be tested to determine his mental capacity.

“It’s almost as if you had a 5-year-old entering the (court) system,” Gragg said.

She contends that Acosta may have been manipulated by other suspects into committing the crime. Four other Sunny Hills High students have been charged in Tay’s murder.

Police reports indicate that Acosta, a 10th-grader, is illiterate. Detectives reported that they had to explain to him what an attorney was, and what the words “remain silent” meant after he was read his rights.

According to police, Tay, Acosta and the other defendants were planning a computer heist in Anaheim, but Tay’s partners grew leery of him when they discovered that he had lied about his identity. Fearful that Tay might go to the police, they planned to beat him to death and bury him in a shallow grave in Acosta’s back yard.

Gragg, however, disputed that account. She said there is no evidence linking Acosta to the planned computer robbery.

“He was not a confidant of these other boys prior to the arrest,” she said.

According to a police report, Acosta told detectives that he agreed to help “get rid of somebody” for $200. Court documents show that Tay was lured to Acosta’s house on New Year’s Eve and taken to the garage where he was attacked with baseball bats and a sledgehammer.

Acosta told police he struck the first blow, hitting Tay in the back of the head. He said he hit Tay after Robert C. Chan, the alleged ringleader of the group, signaled him to start the beating.

After the beating, Acosta went into his house and got some bedsheets to wrap the body, according to his statement to police. He helped bury the body and then hosed down his garage because he was “freaking out” about all the blood that had splattered, Acosta said in the report.

Minutes later, Chan took money out of Tay’s wallet and paid Acosta $120, according to police reports.

Four days after Tay’s murder, Acosta was arrested along with Mun Bong Kang, 17; Kirn Young Kim, 16; Charles Choe, 17, and Chan, 18, all of Fullerton. Chan is being tried as an adult. He is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 22.

Choe, Kim and Kang have all pleaded not guilty and are scheduled attend the Feb. 5 hearing to determine whether they should be tried as adults.