The last of four parachute kids convicted of charges connected to the brutal bullying of an 18-year-old girl in Los Angeles has been sentenced to three years in prison, reports NY Magazine.
All four came to the United States from China as high school students with the hopes of gaining a head start into admittance at a prestigious U.S. university. They come without parental supervision and are sent by middle and upper income parents to live in rented homes.
But these so called parachute kids went sideways, according to prosecutors. Three of them, angered by a friend refusing to pay their bill at an ice cream parlor, forced her to her knees, then wipe up with her hands ice cream smears and cigarette butts off the floor.
Other teens then joined them. They took the girl to a nearby park in Rowland Heights where they stripped her naked, burned her nipples with cigarettes, slapped her hundreds of times and kicked her with high heels.
20-year-old Zheng Lu pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to three years in prison. The three boys who started it all were previously sentenced to six to 13 year terms on charges of torture, kidnapping and assault.
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The case has been compared by the judge to the novel The Lord of the Flies and has brought attention to the high number of Chinese high school students in the United States in the United States on F-1 student visas.
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