Bullying incident days prior to Lehrkamp abuse reported at same house
Apr. 7—The mother of a local high school student told police her daughter was filmed while bullied and humiliated in a separate incident at the same residence where Trent Lehrkamp had been before he was taken to the hospital barely breathing and covered in spray paint and urine.
An incident report filed with the Glynn County Police Department by the girl's mother on March 26 said her daughter had been to the St. Simons Island home on March 13 at about 2 p.m. After arriving she was cornered by a male, a minor, and shot multiple times in the back with a white Orby gun, which shoots small gel-balls, the report said.
The mother of the girl requested that her name be omitted from the police incident report and from an interview with this newspaper. The News is honoring her request to avoid identifying her daughter, a minor.
The pellets left multiple welts on the girl's back.
The girl, whose name is redacted in the report because she is a minor, yelled at the boy to stop, which he eventually did, the report said.
The girl told police that "after he stopped shooting she observed another male she identified as (redacted), who was holding his phone sideways as if he were filming," according to the report.
The girl said she "was in shock for a moment and did not know what to do," the report said.
She told police she did not report the incident immediately because she did not want to get anyone in trouble. She said the boy whose parents own the house was not present when the incident occurred, the report said.
The girl has not been back to the house since, the report said.
The nature of the report is listed as an assault and the offense listed in the report is reckless conduct.
The girl's mother was told she could contact magistrate court about getting an arrest warrant for reckless conduct on the boy who allegedly shot her with the gel-ball gun, the report said. She has not filed any charges.
Glynn County Police Capt. Michael Robinson said the incident is being investigated. He said police are looking at how it could be related to the incidents involving Lehrkamp just as they are following up on all leads in the case.
Glynn County Property Records show the home is owned by James Carlton Strother and Lauren C. Strother.
It is the same residence at the center of a county police investigation into the events that led to Lehrkamp being left by three minors at Southeast Georgia Health System's emergency room on March 21 with a blood alcohol level of .464 and breathing just six times per minute, a police report said. He had consumed a mixture of alcohol and antidepressants, the report said.
Images surfaced March 26 on social media in posts that called for arrests to be made and which described the incident as "torture" and "humiliation," among other things. A photo in the posts showed Lehrkamp taped to a chair, covered in spray paint and other items and substances with four minors posing behind him. A video also circulated on social media shows Lehrkamp slumped over in a chair outside at night while being sprayed with a water hose.
Police say the photos of Lehrkamp depict two separate incidents that occurred at the same house.
The posts prompted police to announce their investigation on March 26.
No arrests had been made in the case as of Friday.
The News obtained the report on the Orby gun incident made by the mother through an open records request and contacted her.
She said she noticed her daughter acting differently after the March 13 incident, which she was unaware of until her daughter told her about it a day or two prior to the images of Lehrkamp going viral.
She said her daughter was on her way back from the beach in a pair of shorts and a bikini top on March 13 when she stopped by the house. She had hung out with friends there before, the mother said.
Her daughter stopped going to the house after the incident and began hanging out with different people, the mother said.
"She didn't even want to go to school after that," the mother told The News. "The only reason I found out about it is because she told me. I was really upset as soon as she showed me a picture of her back, which was completely riddled with welts from these point-blank shots to her back."
The mother said the boys at the house were forceful in their actions and it scared and humiliated her daughter.
"She said she just clinched her fists and just took it," she said.
The mother said she wants teens enduring the same kind of bullying and abuse to speak up.
"I hope that it helps other kids who are being bullied to tell the parents, to tell someone they are being bullied," she said.