In Memory of Jason Hughes: Support His Family High School Teacher Killed During Prank Gone Wrong Outside His Home, 5 Teens Arrested

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The five high school students charged in connection with a prank that turned deadly in Gainesville, Ga., should not be criminally charged, according to two previous district attorneys in the county.

On Friday night, the teenagers unspooled rolls of toilet paper outside the residence of Jason Hughes, who slipped, fell into the street and was struck by a pickup truck driven by one of the teens, Jayden Ryan Wallace, as they started to drive away in separate vehicles, the Hall County Sheriff’s Office said. Hughes, 40, a beloved math teacher at North Hall High School in Gainesville, anticipated the prank and had planned to surprise the students, his family has said.

After Hughes was struck, Wallace and the others — Elijah Tate Owens, Aiden Hucks, Ana Katherine Luque and Ariana Cruz, all 18 — stopped and tried to render aid until emergency responders arrived at the scene, according to the sheriff’s office. Hughes later died at the hospital.

Wallace has been charged with first-degree vehicular homicide, a felony, along with reckless driving, a misdemeanor. The four other teens were charged with misdemeanor counts of criminal trespassing and littering on private property, the sheriff’s office said.

Hughes’ family said he knew and loved the five students and urged authorities to drop all charges against them.

Bruce Udolf, who was the district attorney of Hall County from 1983 through 1987, tells PEOPLE that based on the known facts of the case, “It doesn’t seem like any charges would be necessary.”

“Clearly, these kids have learned a painful life lesson that no misdemeanor is ever going to add to,” says Udolf, 74, who lives and practices law in Florida.

Lydia Sartain, 66, who lives in Gainesville and was the district attorney from 1993 to 2002, tells PEOPLE the toilet paper prank was part of a tradition in which high school students play practical jokes on teachers during prom season. Sartain, whose daughters were each students in the Gainesville school system and are now adults, says her home has been “rolled” — or toilet-papered — during past prom seasons.

The day before Hughes’ death, the Hall County school system urged juniors and seniors to refrain from any prom-season pranks resulting in property damage or destruction, warning of “serious consequences that can arise from engaging in destructive behavior.”

“In all of these cases, they are really fact based, and so you have to look at what are the facts,” says Sartain, who like Udolf, now has her own law firm. “Apparently, the teacher was aware that these students were going to come over to his house as a part of these junior-senior activities and most likely, understood that they were coming over to roll, as they call it, his yard.”

Sartain noted that Hughes’ wife also said that he went out to “kind of celebrate the activity with the students” and not to tell them to leave or that they were trespassing.

“If those were the facts, then it could be that it was simply an accident, and nobody acted with any criminal intent, and nobody acted with any degree of negligence,” Sartain says.

Had Hughes not expected the students at his home and chased them away, “then it could be a different scenario,” she says. “In that case, the prosecutor would have to decide, is it a misdemeanor or a felony?”

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Udolf says prosecutors are not required to honor the wishes of a victim’s loved ones. But in this case, given the facts, Udolf believes “most reasonable prosecutors” would give “serious weight to the wishes of the family” to not proceed with criminal prosecution.

The current district attorney, Lee Darragh, will have to answer the question of whether Hughes’ death was a foreseeable consequence of the students’ conduct, Udolf says. “The answer to that is, it’s probably not,” he says.

“I remember him to be a very thoughtful prosecutor, someone that has perspective and that can be relied upon to exercise proper prosecutorial discretion in the appropriate case,” says Udolf, who originally hired Darragh. “This would clearly be such a case.”

Darragh tells PEOPLE, he has talked with Hughes’ family and that because the sheriff’s office didn’t involve his office in the decision making, “I’m having to start anew.”

“I’ll be meeting the family after an appropriate time and make decisions about the matter shortly thereafter,” Darrah said in a statement.