Documents: Teen Lied To Willfully Go To Prison
POSTED: 7:49 pm MST June 20,
2008
UPDATED: 5:52 am MST June 21,
2008
FLORENCE, Ariz. -- A Mesa teen who ran away from home duped the system and lied his way to get into prison to show how bad he was, according to court documents.
The family of Michael Gonzalez, 17, said they had given him up for dead after he disappeared in 2005 until they discovered this week that he was an inmate at an Arizona Department of Corrections prison in Florence."That someone would really want to go to prison, I just don't understand it," said Detective Steve Berry with the Mesa Police Department.Gonzalez had given Mesa police his real full name shortly after officers found him the first time he ran away from home in the fall of 2005, officers said.After he had disappeared a second time, Mesa police said they arrested a teen in early 2006 on suspicion of burglarizing car stereos in the parking lot of Banner Mesa Medical Center and stabbing a security officer with a screwdriver. He identified himself as "Michael Alejandro Gonzales" and said he was 17 instead of 15, court documents said.Officers did not connect the suspected stereo thief with the missing person and booked Gonzalez into jail, documents said."Mr. Gonzalez continued to give incorrect information and stuck with that information," Berry said. "It definitely made it a difficult situation to try and identify him correctly."Or for Mesa police to get in touch with his family. Once Gonzalez, then 15, was fingerprinted on a card identifying him as Michael Gonzales, 17, the legal system recognized that name as his identity, Berry said.Gonzalez was tried as an adult and sentenced to prison in August 2006, where he racked up eight disciplinary infractions and never came clean about who he was or how old he was, according to records on the DOC Web site.This past week, Berry said Mesa police connected Gonzalez with a "z" to Gonzales with an "s" after an officer put Gonzalez's name through a DOC database that turned up a person with the same identity and description.When confronted with the information, police said Gonzalez dropped his ploy and revealed why he had lied."He wanted to go to jail or go to prison to show everyone how bad he was," Berry said.Berry said things might not have been different had they known Gonzalez was 15 at the time of his arrest. Berry said the teen's crime was serious enough, he still might have been charged as an adult.Gonzalez is out of the general prison population and courts will figure out what to do with him.Mesa police said they'll evaluate their system see if they could have been able to spot the name similarities.
| ONLINE: Gonzalez's Incarceration Information |
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