Teen sentenced for shooting near Graham-Kapowsin High School

A teenager who shot two students near Graham-Kapowsin High School last year has been sentenced.

Ronald Douglas Ackerson Jr., 16, pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree assault and second-degree unlawful gun possession as part of negotiations with Pierce County prosecutors. He was charged as an adult.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Ashcraft sentenced him to 13 1/2 years of incarceration.

The 16-year-old and 17-year-old boys wounded in the Dec. 5 shooting survived.

“I just want to be able to enjoy the things I used to,” one teen wrote the court ahead of sentencing. “Nothing is the same; everything hurts or causes panic and it doesn’t have to be that way.”

In his plea statement, Ackerson gave this account of the shooting:

He went with a friend off school grounds, where the friend planned to fight someone. Students gathered to watch, but the fight didn’t happen.

Ackerson and others got in a vehicle to leave, and as they drove away Ackerson fired at least six shots at the crowd from the passenger seat.

“While I do not admit that I fired the gun with the intent to inflict great bodily harm, I do admit that the gun was pointed in the direction of people when it was fired; and that I intended, and did in fact, put people in a reasonable and immediate apprehension of bodily injury,” he wrote.