When Adults Assault Minors: Criminal Charges and Civil Claims in Idaho

Attorney Answer

What those two adults did — tackling you, putting you in a chokehold, and choking your friend until he lost consciousness — fits Idaho's battery statute; but you and your friend are not automatically in the clear either, because of how the incident started.

Idaho Code § 18-903 defines battery three ways: the willful and unlawful use of force or violence upon the person of another; the actual, intentional, and unlawful touching or striking of another against that person's will; or unlawfully and intentionally causing bodily harm to an individual. Grabbing, tackling, and choking fall under all three. Idaho Code § 18-901 defines assault as an unlawful attempt, coupled with apparent ability, to commit a violent injury on another, or an intentional and unlawful threat by word or act to do violence, coupled with apparent ability and an act creating a well-founded fear that the violence is imminent.

Here is the part that cuts against you, and you should hear it plainly. By your own account the incident started when your friend threw a ball at this man and then pushed him, and you took him to the ground and were on top of him. Under § 18-903 those acts are also touchings, and whether they were unlawful depends on who was defending whom, at what point, and with how much force. Police and prosecutors sort that out by looking at the whole sequence, not at the last thing that happened. A 14-year-old who wrestles an adult to the ground is not automatically the victim of the encounter — and the fact that a second adult intervened does not by itself make what you did lawful.

On your question about how to "take offense": you cannot press charges. In Idaho, only a prosecutor decides whether to file criminal charges, and that decision is made from the police report, not from a request by the person who was hurt. What you can do is make sure the report is complete and accurate. Separately from any criminal case, a civil claim for your friend's injuries belongs to him — and because you are both minors, it has to be brought by a parent or guardian on his behalf.

Your friend losing consciousness for roughly two minutes is the most serious fact in your account, and it is a medical matter before it is a legal one.

What you can do

1. Make sure your friend has been evaluated by a doctor for the loss of consciousness, today if he has not been. Beyond his health, the medical record is the single strongest piece of evidence either of you will ever have about what happened. 2. Tell your parents everything, including the parts that do not make you look good. They have to be the ones dealing with the police, the park, and any lawyer, and they cannot do it on partial information. 3. Do not write out your own account of what happened. Notes you create yourself are not protected by attorney-client privilege, can be seized or subpoenaed, and can be used to impeach you if your testimony later differs. Instead preserve the records that already exist — texts, call logs, emails, receipts, photos and location history — along with the names and contact details of any witnesses, and give your account to your attorney verbally. Do not edit out your own conduct. 4. Have your parents call the police department and get the report number, then follow up on whether a report was actually taken. If officers arrived forty minutes later, there may be little in it, and it can be supplemented. 5. Have your parents send the trampoline park a written request to preserve the security footage, immediately. Most systems overwrite within days or weeks, and the video is what will resolve the sequence question that everything else turns on. 6. Get the names and phone numbers of anyone who saw it, including staff on duty. 7. Do not discuss the incident on social media or with the men involved, and do not contact them. Anything either of you posts becomes evidence in whichever direction it happens to point. 8. Have your parents speak with a lawyer promptly. Civil claims for injuries have filing deadlines, and the sooner someone reviews the facts, the more of the evidence still exists.