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Last updated on Friday, May 14, 2010
(CARMEL) - Hamilton and Hendricks County prosecutors plan to announce Monday what if any charges they’ll file in a pair of hazing cases at Carmel High School.
A grand jury reportedly has rejected possible felony charges against four Carmel basketball players.
If that's true, it would rule out the sexual deviate conduct and confinement charges mentioned in a heavily censored police report as possibilities, and would point toward misdemeanor battery charges.
That charge carries up to six months in jail, a year if the victim is injured.
A confinement charge would have carried up to eight years, a deviate conduct charge carries 6-to-20.
Police had listed any criminal charge that might apply at the end of an otherwise heavily blacked-out report on the assault said to have taken place on the basketball team bus as the team returned home from a January 22 game at South Vigo.
A Carmel freshman told police three teammates assaulted him at the back of the bus.
Carmel Police and the grand jury have also been investigating an earlier incident in a high school locker room, in which a student accused another player of yanking down his shorts.
That incident apparently was reported after the bus allegations came to light. Hendricks and Hamilton County prosecutors have been investigating jointly, after the initial investigation found the bus was traveling through Hendricks County.
Hendricks County Prosecutor Patricia Baldwin and Hamilton County Prosecutor Sonia Leerkamp will make their decisions separately and announce them together.
In the locker room case, the grand jury could return indictments, although Leerkamp could theoretically file her own more or less serious charges.
Prosecutors, Carmel Police and the Carmel-Clay Schools have released few details about the incidents.
School attorneys say they've been waiting for the investigation to conclude before releasing records related to the charges, and will make more information available next Friday.
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