Plea Delayed in Ballpark Slaying

Looking shy and bewildered, the 13-year-old boy who has been charged with murder in the baseball bat beating of a 15-year-old after a Palmdale Pony League game made his first court appearance Friday.

The short, slightly built youth wore a baggy gray sweatshirt and sat quietly at the defense table as his attorney asked Sylmar Juvenile Court Commissioner Jack Gold for a delay in legal proceedings to study the case.

The boy, whose name is being withheld because of his age, was ordered to return for arraignment May 2 and will remain in custody at juvenile hall. His parents and a clergyman attended the arraignment, then left without speaking to reporters, as did his attorney, William McKinney. Earlier in the day, the victim’s father told a TV interviewer that he and his wife had mixed emotions about the severity of punishment if the boy is found guilty.

“We don’t want to see him lose the rest of his life,” Brian Rourke told Matt Lauer, host of NBC’s “Today” show. “But on the other hand, we feel there’s got to be some kind of punishment for the act.”

The youth is accused of killing Jeremy Rourke on Tuesday. Witnesses said the two boys, whose families have known each other for years, began arguing in the snack bar line.

The younger boy walked away, took an aluminum bat out of an equipment bag and then clubbed the 15-year-old, first on a leg and then on the head, witnesses said.

“It’s not to me a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Brian Rourke told Lauer. “From what it was described to me, it was more of an act that took extra thought to happen.”

Lonnie Felker, the deputy district attorney handling the case, declined to comment.

In California, children younger than 14 cannot be tried as adults. If convicted, the teenager can be incarcerated at the California Youth Authority until he turns 25.

Angela Rourke, Jeremy’s mother, told Lauer “we’ve never seen any violence” displayed by the suspect, who was good friends with Jeremy’s brother, also 13.

Responding to a report that Jeremy had teased the other boy about losing a game that night, she said “it may have” caused the younger boy to snap, “but I don’t think that anybody rational would, should ever act that way” by retaliating with a baseball bat.

Jeremy was a freshman football player at Highland High School and a former Pony League all-star who was at the ballpark that night to watch his younger brother play.

The Rourkes described their son as the “class clown.”

“His biggest thing was getting people to laugh,” Brian Rourke told Lauer. “He jokes with the coaches, the manager. He just has a blast out there.”

They said the suspect’s parents have not called them. Angela Rourke described her son’s alleged attacker as “nice” and “pretty quiet.”

Her husband said he was 10 feet away and did not see the dispute or the attack.