Man pleads guilty in baseball-bat assault

VERNAL — A Uintah County man has pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for his role in the baseball-bat beating of another man.

Juan Enrique Morales, 23, entered his plea Wednesday to the second-degree felony count — filed as an alternative charge to attempted murder — in exchange for prosecutors dismissing misdemeanor counts of tampering with evidence and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Morales and two teenage brothers told police they were at a Vernal convenience store on Jan. 8 when another vehicle full of men pulled up and began yelling obscenities at them, according to court records.

Investigators said Morales told one of the teens to retrieve an aluminum bat from the bed of his pickup truck.

When the other vehicle left the convenience store, police said Morales and the two boys — one 16, the other 14 — followed it to a nearby business and confronted Richard Oldson. The 16-year-old used the bat to strike Oldson twice in the head, according to authorities.

The other teen told investigators that when his brother hit Oldson the second time, it was "like someone shot him in the face, he just dropped and started twitching on the ground."

Oldson, 18, was flown to a Salt Lake hospital, where he was treated for serious head injuries. He has since been released from the hospital.

Morales, who has been held in the Uintah County Jail since his arrest, is set to be sentenced on April 1.

Uintah County prosecutors have filed an attempted murder charge against the 16-year-old in juvenile court and are seeking to have him tried as an adult. A preliminary hearing in that case is scheduled for March 20. No charges have been filed against the 14-year-old.

The teens' mother claimed in an e-mail to the Uintah Basin Standard last week that her sons were being targeted by police and prosecutors because they are Native Americans.

E-MAIL: geoff@ubstandard.com