Oregon Teenager Pleads Guilty, Sentenced to 11 Years in Swastika Attack
An Oregon teenager pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Thursday for taking part in an attack on a friend who was beaten, forced to eat cat feces and had a swastika carved into his forehead, prosecutors said.
Blue Kalmbach, 16, the last of four teenage defendants to plead guilty in the case, entered guilty pleas to first-degree kidnapping, robbery and second-degree assault, Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Ramras said.
Ramras said Kalmbach was responsible “for the most, sort of, hands on physical abuse,” Ramras said, and thus received the longest sentence of the four. Kalmbach apologized in court before he was sentenced.
In February, the four teenagers were charged with luring 15-year-old Dustyn Murrian into a shed, hitting him with a crowbar, shooting him with a BB gun, forcing him to eat cat feces and carving the Nazi symbol into his forehead with a box cutter.
At the time of the crime, Murrian said his attackers told him they wanted money and a skateboard. They allowed him to leave the shed to get the items but he fled to a nearby auto shop, where employees called police.
Kalmbach, Jenna Montgomery, 15, and Jess Taylor, 17, were charged as adults with assault, kidnapping and robbery. Montgomery was sentenced to nearly nine years in a youth correctional facility and Taylor to about 7-1/2 years, Ramras said.
Shane Connell, 14, was tried as a juvenile and earlier sentenced to 10 years.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO