Even though they're locked in a juvenile jail, they still talk about their dreams of college and playing football.
But now they have to consider how possible prison sentences will fit into those plans.Eleven teenage boys wait in the Salt Lake Juvenile Detention Center for court hearings that will decide whether the justice system will try them as juveniles or as adults for a string of 21 armed robberies.
Prosecutors are seeking to try them all as adults, except for one 15-year-old who has already pleaded guilty. If the boys are moved to the adult system, they face possible five-years-to-life sentences behind bars.
Some of the teens accused in the robberies agreed to talk with the Deseret News, on condition of anonymity, in interviews at the detention facility. They said they wanted people to hear their side of the story.
"(The media) is saying we're bad kids, or some of us are gang kids," one teen said from juvenile detention. Instead, he said, he and his friends are good students with ambitious goals who just got caught up in something very stupid.
"We were just short on cash," he said. "I never knew that some of those people quit their jobs after we robbed them. I never knew people were all traumatized by that."
He swears that if he'd heard what was happening to the victims, he would have stopped.
"Every time we did it, it was like nobody cared," he said. "It was like stealing candy from a store."
* * *
One victim was working at the drive-through window of a fast-food restaurant when a boy about his age approached and asked to order some food. The 16-year-old Taylorsville boy slid the window open.
"I want a cheeseburger, and give me all your money," the boy outside the window said. He was pointing a gun at the worker's stomach.
A second gunman entered the store and ordered the other employees down on the ground. One of the robbers told the worker at the window to open the restaurant's safe.
The boy thought the gun might be a toy, but he didn't dare challenge the robber, who'd threatened to shoot him if he tried to use the phone instead of emptying cash from the safe.
As the robbers left, they told the employees to stay on the ground or they'd be shot. The three teens lay on the floor for about a minute before one of them got up and called 911.
A victim at another store had just thrown the trash bags into the Dumpster and gone back inside the store where she sold doughnuts for not much more than minimum wage.
A few seconds later, two men walked in. One of them stayed by the door while the other approached the counter.
"Can I help you?" she asked, the same way she did all day every day.
"This is a ----ing robbery," the man at the counter said. "Open the register and give me all your money."
As he spoke, he lifted his shirt, exposing a handgun tucked into his waistband. She said she couldn't open the register without ringing something up first.
"Ring up a ----ing doughnut, and give me the money," he retorted. She started to ring up a doughnut, but thought she saw someone coming and cleared it.
No one was coming.
"Don't mess around, or I'll shoot you," he said. She opened the register, took out $80 in cash and put it in a paper sack.
They left. She locked the door behind them and then called police.
* * *
Investigators say the teens usually got together in groups of two or three to commit a robbery. The teens interviewed said it was always a spur-of-the-moment thing.
What were they thinking when they robbed the small businesses?
One boy said simply, "We weren't. If we were thinking we wouldn't have done it."
Some of the arrested teens said it was tough keeping the robberies a secret. One boy said he wasn't scared, just stupid.
Another said he was scared of the police and his classmates, although no one ever threatened him.
The money was usually split among those who committed the robberies. Those interviewed said that some boys participated only once and that others took part in nearly all of the crimes. One boy said he initially said no when he was asked to participate in a robbery.
"We were driving around, and the guy I was with can talk people into robbing places," he said. "I didn't need the money . . . but when I got there, in the moment, I just did it.
"That was the dumbest thing I ever done in my whole life."
Where did the $9,000 in stolen money go?
"Just nothing, on nothing," one boy said.
Police say the boys spent the majority of the money on food, clothing and dates.
The boy said he now sees that the robberies were not just a waste of money, but of his life.
"It ruined everything," he said.
He regrets what he's done, particularly to his parents and his victims. "They were trying to make a living, and we were robbing them."
* * *
Kreg VanStralen owns the chain of Central Park Restaurants, four of which were robbed by teenage gunmen. He briefly considered selling his restaurants because he worried someone would get shot and he'd be sued for lack of security.
At least eight of his employees who were threatened during the robberies have quit, and some have required counseling.
"These guys were actually threatening people's lives, not only emotionally but also physically," VanStralen said. His experience makes it hard for him to see the boys as anything but criminals.
Some of his employees, he said, were ordered to lie on the ground or be shot.
"I think this should be looked at hard. They say (the kids) are not hardened criminals," he said. "Well, they robbed 21 stores. What does it take to be a hardened criminal, to kill and rape someone?"
* * *
"Most of us can't sleep at night thinking about what we done," one of the teenage suspects said.
Another talks about the pain he sees in his mother's teary eyes.
"That made me feel worse than anything," he said. "We weren't ever out to hurt anybody."
Nine of the eleven boys charged in the string of robberies are Granger High School students. Six of them played on the football team until their arrests Oct. 16. The string of robberies began in June.
Some of the teens wanted to publicly apologize to their coach, their classmates and their teammates.
Many of the boys' future plans included football, either as a way to finance college or in hopes of playing as a professional.
"That was my dream, man," one boy said. "I know I'm out for at least this season, but I hope I can play someday."
Another boy vowed he'd pursue his dreams of going to college and playing football, even if it meant waiting until he served prison time.
"That's like my life - football. . . . It meant a lot to me."
One teen's involvement in the robberies ended, he said, when football season started. He didn't need the money, he didn't want to do it and he said he wasn't threatened or coerced into participating.
So why did he do it?
"My mind just went off," he said. "That's what I can't figure out - why I did it."