Sunday, October 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

IN DEPTH: The victims: Rock attack left permanent physical and psychological scars

Public statements by suspects, attorneys anger boys, their parents

Stephen Tanner Hansen suffered life-threatening and disfiguring injuries in a July attack involving individuals associated with the 311 Boyz. PHOTO COURTESY OF CARMA MAHN A rock thrown through the windshield of a truck struck Hansen, shattering his left eye socket and breaking his left arm. PHOTO COURTESY OF CARMA MAHN Stephen Tanner Hansen, 17 Joe Grill, 18 Craig LeFevre, 19

The victims remain silent by choice.

Stephen Tanner Hansen, Craig LeFevre and Joe Grill are saving their stories for the trials of their nine accused attackers. At a July party they now wish they'd never attended, the three friends found themselves confronting the escalating wrath of a youthful crowd, with juveniles in a posh northwest neighborhood wielding beer bottles and 4-pound rocks as weapons.

The three boys stand at the center of the most violent crime police have linked to a pack of teens dubbed the 311 Boyz. One of the landscape rocks -- lobbed at LeFevre's pickup when the trio attempted to escape the growing fury of their peers -- crashed through the windshield and into Hansen, who was sitting between Grill and LeFevre.

Hansen suffered life-threatening injuries that one day will heal into permanent scars.

LeFevre and Grill were left with cuts, bruises and the lasting image of Hansen's mangled body slumped between them in the cab of the truck.

"I don't remember getting hit with a rock because it just knocked me out instantly," Hansen told police in a voluntary statement given on July 26. "All I remember is that we were driving ... Craig was screaming at me, he was crying, he's like, 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening.' "

The decision to save their first-person accounts for the witness stand isn't always easy to live with. At a September barbecue held to mark the snipping of wires that had kept Hansen's broken jaw tightly shut for nearly two months, LeFevre sat on the edge of his friend's living room sofa, his head bowed and his shoulders tense. Hansen's posture echoed LeFevre's. The two nodded their heads in affirmation as their parents and attorney spoke for them.

"It's been hard," said Carma Mahn, Hansen's mother. "I say all the time that this is a day-by-day thing. Some days are hard, and he goes through periods of being really angry. Sometimes, he looks in the mirror. ..."

Mahn paused to look at her son.

"It's hard," she said again.

With his jaw freed to move a fraction of an inch, Hansen is now able to eat his food with a fork instead of slurping it through a straw. That's the milestone his family and friends celebrated with a hamburger and hot dog get-together on Sept. 19. But the obstacles in front of the teenager are still numerous and some will never be overcome.

The tall, lanky youth has already undergone surgeries to rebuild his shattered left eye socket and repair his broken left arm. The hurled rock also left him with damage to his right eye socket. Two titanium plates were used to rebuild his crushed face, and Hansen will have to undergo additional surgery in December. After spending hours in the operating room and enduring hundreds of stitches in his face, Hansen knows he'll never look the way he did.

Her son's face, Mahn said, was like a puzzle that needed to be reassembled. And no matter how well the physicians do their jobs, Mahn said, her son will bear the scars of his run-in with a mob for the rest of his life.

"He has partial peripheral vision loss, that's permanent," Mahn said of the injury to her son's left eye. "There's still a chance that his central vision will go. It's a waiting game. We just have to wait and see what happens."

The public statements of defense attorneys and those charged in the attack, especially Steven Gazlay, have severely tested the victims' resolve not to speak until the trials. Gazlay, named by Clark County prosecutor Christopher Laurent as "the instigator of this entire fiasco," insists that he was not involved.

At his September arraignment, Gazlay also said, "Prior to this whole thing happening, Tanner was hanging out with a few kids accused of this. Chris Farley was one of them. If we are 311 gang members, then Tanner is supposedly a 311 member."

The assertions incense both the boys and their parents. Gazlay might claim not to be involved, said the mothers of LeFevre and Hansen, but that doesn't jibe with witness statements that said Gazlay fomented the attack after the victims arrived at the party with Gazlay's ex-girlfriend in tow.

"Haven't they hurt these kids enough?" asked Craig's mother, Stacey LeFevre. "They're just trying to take the heat off of themselves."

Attorney Jerome Bowen, who represents all three victims, said Gazlay's comments notably lacked any remorse or apology for what happened.

"You can't just go around destroying people's lives," Bowen said. "This was a totally unprovoked attack. You can dress it up anyway you want to, but it still comes out the same way in the end."

LeFevre, who graduated from Cimarron-Memorial High School in June, distracts himself from what's being said by working long hours at his health club job. Hansen takes solace in his dachshund puppy and tries not to think too much about what he's missing.

This would have been Hansen's last year at Cimarron-Memorial, but instead of taking part in the rituals that mark senior year, he's being home-schooled until he's strong enough to return to classes, maybe in the second semester.

His solitary education is in marked contrast to the laughing boy featured numerous times in the school's 2002-03 yearbook. As a junior, Hansen worked on the yearbook staff, played on the volleyball team and earned average grades while basking in the company of his friends.

"This was supposed to be his senior year," Mahn said. "He's never going to get it back."