Two former high school students received slaps on their wrists on Thursday when they were sentenced to spend weekends in jail for their part in the hateful vandalism of the Glenelg High School campus.
According to WBALTV, Tyler Curtiss, Matthew Lipp, Joshua Shaffer and Seth Taylor, all former students at the school, were charged with hate crimes after spray painting homophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist slurs across the campus back in May 2018. Some of the graffiti targeted the school’s Black principal, David Burton, calling him the N-word.
The young men were caught on surveillance camera.
Curtiss and Lipp were the last to receive sentences in the case on Thursday.
Lipp was sentenced to 16 weekends in jail, while Curtiss got off with eight weekends in jail plus one day. When all is said and done, Lipp will serve 48 days in jail, while Curtiss will serve 25 days.
“We believe these sentences reflect Howard County’s values,” Howard County States Attorney Rich Gibson said.
Both Curtiss and Lipp apologized at their sentencing hearings.
“I’m ashamed of the fear, mistrust, and pain that I’ve caused,” Curtiss, who turned 19 in jail on Friday, said.
The other two young men involved in the case had already been sentenced.
Shaffer was sentenced to 18 consecutive weekends in jail, in addition to 250 hours of community service and three years of supervised probation for his role; while Taylor was sentenced to 27 days in jail and three years of supervised probation.
Defense attorneys say their clients will spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for what they did.
“Like I said in court, you can’t expunge Google,” Lipp’s attorney, Brian Thompson said.
For the school principal’s part, Burton said that he’s “happy that there’s closure.”