Five Georgia teenagers will no longer face criminal charges related to a prank they carried out last week on one of their teachers that resulted in the teacher’s death after he was struck by a pickup truck, the authorities said, days after the teacher’s family urged prosecutors to drop the charges.
The teenagers drove to their teacher’s home in Gainesville, Ga., about 55 miles northeast of Atlanta, on March 6 with toilet paper to toss over his trees as part of a prank.
Their teacher, Jason Hughes, 40, was aware of the plan and wanted to catch his students in the act, his family said.
But as Mr. Hughes, a teacher at North Hall High School in Gainesville, approached his students, he slipped on ground that was slick with rain and fell into the street.
The five students involved in the prank had fled to their vehicles and started to drive away.
One of the students, Jayden Ryan Wallace, 18, of Gainesville, ran over Mr. Hughes with his pickup truck, the Hall County Sheriff’s Office said last week. Mr. Hughes was transported to a hospital, where he died.
Mr. Wallace was charged with homicide by vehicle in the first degree, a felony, as well as criminal trespass, reckless driving and littering, the sheriff’s office said.
The four other students, who are all 18 and from Gainesville, were charged with criminal trespass and littering on private property, misdemeanors.
As Mr. Wallace began driving, he never saw Mr. Hughes, and his pickup truck “had only traveled a few feet when the accident occurred,” Graham McKinnon, Mr. Wallace’s lawyer, said in a statement.
The vehicular homicide charge was unwarranted because Mr. Wallace never operated his vehicle in an unsafe manner, Mr. McKinnon said.
“In the end, there was no crime — only an extremely sad and devastating accident,” Mr. McKinnon said.
Lee Darragh, the district attorney for Hall County, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon.
In a statement last week, Mr. Hughes’s family said the students loved him and tried to provide first aid until emergency responders arrived. His relatives had said that they supported “getting the charges dropped for all involved.”
The Hall County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Friday that it supported Mr. Darragh’s decision to dismiss the charges.
The sheriff’s office added that its responsibility is to file appropriate charges “even when the decision to bring charges is difficult and could be viewed negatively by the public.”
The charges were dismissed on the eve of Mr. Hughes’s funeral, which is scheduled for Saturday morning, the Hall County School District said on social media.
Will Schofield, the district’s superintendent, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon, but previously said that Mr. Hughes was “a passionate teacher, mentor and coach who was loved and respected by students and colleagues.”
Hannah Ziegler is a general assignment reporter for The Times, covering topics such as crime, business, weather, pop culture and online trends.
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