Shaun Deberry, 19, has been charged with a felony count of aggravated assault in connection with a Sept. 8 assault in downtown Great Falls.

Ethaniel Pherigo, 19, was already charged with the same offense from the same incident.

Jesse Edwards, 14, has been charged with felony aggravated assault in juvenile court.

The victim, 37, is in critical condition, according to officials.

If the victim does not survive his injuries, the charges against all three will be upgraded to deliberate homicide, a death in the commission of another crime, according to Cascade County Josh Racki.

If that occurs, Edwards’ case would be automatically sent to a district court judge for a hearing to determine if he should be tried as an adult or whether his case should be sent back down to juvenile court, Racki said.

Pherigo’s bond was set at $500,000; Deberry’s bond was set at $250,000; and Edwards at $15,000, Racki said.

Weekend crime roundup: man charged for stomping on man’s head in alley; man charged for carrying gun near mall; woman charged for hitting another in the head with a rock

Deberry’s charging documents provide more details about the assault that occurred around 10 p.m. in the alley behind City Bar at 709 Central Ave. on Sept. 8.

Officers responded around 10 p.m. to the scene and a bar employee said there had been a group of people fighting who then walked down the alley. Officers went down the alley eastbound, the direction suspects had headed, and found a male lying unconscious in a pool of blood, according to court documents.

The male was transported to the emergency room where he was admitted to the intensive care unit with a brain stem injury, according to court documents.

Officers checked the area for those matching the descriptions of those involved as given by witnesses and located the property manager for apartments in the alley who had video footage of the incident.

Officers also spoke to the manager of the Lifestyle Real Estate/Haute Hive building at 721 Central Ave. who provided video footage from their cameras to officers, who reviewed the footage and identified one of those involved as Pherigo, who was previously charged.

Officers had Pherigo’s address in their system and responded to his residence in the 600 block of 8th Street North, where he was located. Pherigo initially told officers he didn’t know about the incident but later said he acted in self-defense, according to court documents.

According to investigators, the victim had left a concert at The Newberry and was walking downtown when he ran into the group of teenagers.

In the surveillance video, the victim, identified as J.K,, 37, was walking eastbound down the alley with a group of young adults behind him.

In the video, Deberry hits the victim in the head with a can of Sprite, according to court documents.

The victim walks away, but is pursued by Deberry and the other five suspects.

In the video, the group is seen throwing the victim to the ground with Deberry stomping on him while he’s on the ground, according to court documents, and Deberry then walks away and two other males continue assaulting the victim, stomping on his head.

Pherigo is seen stomping on the victim’s head while he’s face down on the ground, then rummaging through the victim’s pockets while another male, later identified as Jesse Edwards, continues to stomp on the victim’s head, according to court documents, and Pherigo is seen in the video taking items from the victim.

Officers spoke to Pherigo’s family members and were able to identify others in the video, specifically Deberry and Edwards.

Pherigo told police that he and Deberry were involved and that Deberry had lured the victim into the alley, according to court documents.

After the assault, Deberry went to a residence at 1101 3rd Ave. S. where the resident, Mona Ekblad told officers that Deberry and Edwards had arrived at her residence shortly after the assault. She told officers that Edwards had left  around 11:05 p.m. and Deberry had staying the night until contacted by law enforcement.

In speaking with detectives, Deberry admitted to the acts seen in the video and said the victim had a knife, according to court documents.

Deberry is currently on probation for a felony aggravated animal cruelty sentence from July. In that case, he hit his ex-girlfriend’s friend’s four-month old chihuahua with a pipe while the girls were walking, killing the dog, on the belief that his ex girlfriend had broken a window, according to court documents.

In that case, he was also located at Ekblad’s residence, according to court documents.

In the Sept. 8 assault investigation, officers interviewed P.R., a juvenile who was in the alley during the altercation, who told officers that he and five others were walking downtown, including Pherigo, Deberry and Edwards.

P.R. said that the victim had approached them asking for methamphetamine and P.R. said no, so the victim had walked down the alley away from the group.

P.R. told detectives that as the victim walked away, Deberry called him back and hit him in the head with the soda can.

P.R. told detectives that he then rode his bike away from the group, not wanting to be involved in the altercation.

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Karen Sheid and Velta Lee have been charged in connection with the 12-year-old boy who went missing last week.

Sheid, 53, was charged with felony custodial interference, criminal possession of dangerous drugs, endangering the welfare of a child and a misdemeanor count of criminal possession of drug paraphernalia.

Lee, 60, was charged custodial interference and first violation unlawful transactions with children.

According to court documents, Gregory Locke, 12, was reported as a runway the morning of Sept. 6. and that he had left home sometime overnight.

CCSO looking for missing 12-year-old

He was located around 4:20 p.m. Sept. 8 and Cascade County Sheriff’s Office detectives learned that after leaving home, he was walking on 10th Avenue South near the McDonalds and Taco Bell around 1:45 a.m. Sept. 6, where he met a female identified as Lee and told her needed help, according to court documents.

Lee helped him by getting him food and taking him to an apartment where she lived with Sheid where they gave him a tablet to play games and he played on a computer.

The boy told detectives that Sheid and Lee were smoking cigarettes, using marijuana, and smoking a white substance from a small plastic bag while he was in the apartment and that the white substance was smoked out of a clear glass pipe they heated with a torch. They told the boy that it was sugar, but after a search warrant was executed on the apartment, the substance tested presumptive positive for methamphetamine, according to court documents.

Detectives also located other drug paraphernalia in the apartment.

After Gregory met Lee in the alley, they walked to Keith’s Country Store and during the walk, Lee taught him how to prepare marijuana and smoked it with him, then again at the apartment, according to court documents.

Gregory told detectives that Lee gave him a cigarette that he smoked, according to court documents.

He told detectives that while at the apartment he had told the women he had run away from home and that Sheid told him to plan to call law enforcement and turn himself in, but that law enforcement couldn’t come to the apartment because she wouldn’t survive in jail, according to court documents.

Gregory told detectives that Sheid and Lee were aware he was missing because they saw the Facebook posts looking for him. Sheid told detectives that she had told Gregory to turn himself in. Lee told detectives that she was told the night of Sept. 7 that Gregory was a runaway but chose not to call law enforcement to avoid upsetting Sheid, according to court documents.

According to court documents, on Sept. 8, a male and female picked up Gregory and took him to several places in Great Falls until the male walked him to and left Gregory at the front door of the Great Falls Rescue Mission, where he was ultimately found by CCSO deputies.