A Coatesville teen accused of helping plan a school-bus shooting will face a county judge

A Coatesville teen was part of a conspiracy to ambush a rival teenager in retaliation for a high school fight, targeting him as he got off a school bus in the Chester County city last October, prosecutors said Friday.

That ambush nearly proved deadly, as two of Jaki White-Marshall’s friends opened fire on the crowded bus, causing students and the bus driver to duck for cover as bullets shattered the vehicle’s windshield.

No one was injured in the attack, prosecutors said. For his role, White-Marshall, 18, was charged with attempted murder, conspiracy and related crimes, offenses that District Judge Gregory Hines held for trial after a preliminary hearing Friday morning.

White-Marshall’s attorney, David Nenner, asserted during the hearing that his client should not be lumped in with the other suspects. The teen, Nenner said, knew about the planned attack, but thought it would just be a fistfight. He did not bring a gun to the fight, drove separately, and only intended to watch the melee, according to the lawyer.

“Did he know these people? Yes. Did he associate with them? Yes. But, there’s nothing that was of this record that he knew exactly what they would do,” Nenner said. “And the totality of these circumstances shows he acted independently.”

» READ MORE: Gunman, accomplice arrested for shooting at school bus in Coatesville, police say

Assistant District Attorney Anne Yoskoski said White-Marshall was not being truthful. A video pulled from his cell phone that had been recorded four days before the shooting showed the teen boasting that he was a member of “21 Hunnit,” and that the group’s rivals would soon be targets of gun violence.

The three others present during the shooting — Gabriel Johnson, Jose Medina and Medina’s brother — are also affiliated with the group, Yoskoski said.

Members of the group, including White-Marshall, were part of a text thread discussing how to retaliate against the intended target after the teen had “jumped” Medina’s brother hours before the shooting at Coatesville Area Senior High School, according to messages from the group text presented in court Friday.

Additionally, investigators testified that White-Marshall told them he saw Medina wave a handgun around hours before the shooting, seemingly implying he would use it on the teens who had attacked his brother.

“You see a gun brandished at 11 a.m.; logically, what do you think is going to happen at 2:30 p.m., when you show up with a mask and gloves to watch a fistfight?” Yoskoski said. “It’s common sense.”

Prosecutors have said Johnson, 17, was one of the shooters who fired eight bullets at the school bus, but they have not identified the second shooter. Johnson and Medina, 20, face criminal charges similar to White-Marshall’s.

Both waived their preliminary hearings in the case earlier this year and are proceeding to trial. The Inquirer is not naming Medina’s brother because he has not been charged with a crime.

The bus struck by the gunfire was dropping off students at the intersection of Hope Avenue and Charles Street about 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 10, according to investigators.

Surveillance video played during Friday’s hearing showed Medina, his younger brother, and Johnson parking a gold Honda Civic and walking toward the corner where the bus was scheduled to stop.

White-Marshall arrived separately, driving a white Kia sedan registered to his grandmother, prosecutors said. He followed the three others to the scene of the planned attack.

As the gunshots ring out, White-Marshall sprinted away from the scene, running in a different direction than the three others, investigators said.

White-Marshall caught up with them too late, watching as they pulled away in the Honda and exclaiming that they left him behind, as seen in another video played in court.

Detectives traced the Kia back to White-Marshal’s grandmother, and spoke to him at her house nearby.

Nenner, his attorney, said that prosecutors had failed to prove White-Marshall was part of any conspiracy, saying they had left the judge to “solve a puzzle without any pieces.”

But Hines disagreed, and sent the case to a county judge.