Teen in Coma After Marine’s Horseplay

A 16-year-old Garden Grove boy was in a coma Sunday after horsing around at a party with a Marine who may have applied “some sort of a hold,” Anaheim police said.

The incident occurred about 10 p.m. Saturday in an apartment in the 1700 block of West Sumac Lane, police said. Officers arrived to find Samuel Meek, a 10th-grader at Rancho Alamitos High School, lying unconscious in the driveway, according to police spokesman Rick Martinez.

Friends and family members of Meek’s were holding vigil for him at UCI Medical Center on Sunday night, where a hospital official said he was in critical condition.

“When he came into the medical center he was having very shallow breaths,” said the teenager’s father, also named Samuel Meek. “They hooked him up on a respirator and he hasn’t awakened since.”

Martinez of the Police Department said: “We believe that the [Marine] may have been applying some sort of a hold on the 16-year-old.”

He would not release the name of the Marine, identifying him only as an 18-year-old stationed at Camp Pendleton.

“The officers called in a team of detectives, who interviewed a substantial number of people and are trying to piece together what happened,” Martinez said. “It does not appear to be an intentional act where he purposely intended to harm the guy. The guys were doing stuff together. It’s not like it was against his will.”

Nonetheless, Martinez said, the incident has not been officially ruled an accident.

“Once the investigation is over,” he said, “we will send the information to the DA’s office to make the determination as to whether a law was violated. It may not have been an intentional act, but it may not have been an accident either. We will leave it to the legal experts to say.”

As of late Sunday, Martinez said, no arrests had been made in the case. The Marine involved, he said, was believed to be back on the base, though a spokesman for the Marines could not confirm that.

Camp Pendleton Staff Sgt. John Jamison said no one at the base had been officially notified of the incident, but that he was making inquiries in response to questions from the Times.

Meek’s family and friends, meanwhile--many of them members of a church group to which he belongs--were at the hospital Sunday, praying for his recovery.