During a party, a promising teen athlete was lured into an ambush and brutally beaten. As the victim lay in a coma, his family decided there was good reason to file a lawsuit.
Cole Hagan, 16, was hospitalized and faced with the possibility of never fully recovering from his injuries after he was ambushed and brutally beaten by a group of his peers. The Texas teen was at a pool party in Lake Jackson when a couple of his Brazoswood High School classmates told him that his truck had been hit. However, it was all a ruse to lure the boy outside alone.
Insider reports that when Hagan went outside, another teen jumped him. The ambush had been planned several days in advance by 17-year-old Reid Mitchell who, along with 18-year-old Logan Huber and 17-year-old Ayden Holland, caught Hagan off-guard. Huber told police that he watched “Reid Mitchell punch (Cole Hagan), bear hug him, slap him to the ground and then get on top of him and elbow him in the face.”
After beating Hagan to a bloody pulp, Mitchell called one of the victim’s friends, telling them to “come get your boy.” Classmates then found Hagan’s lifeless body “laying in the street bleeding from his ears.” He was rushed to Memorial Hermann Hospital with multiple brain bleeds and skull fractures, a broken collarbone, and other injuries.
Hagan was placed on a ventilator in a coma. When he regained consciousness, he thought he had been in a car accident and selflessly asked if his friends were okay.
“That right there killed me because that’s who he is, and that’s why it made this thing so heinous,” Hagan’s brother said. “They chose the weakest link. They chose the person that they had to lure outside to fight because he was not a kid that if you called him out, he was going to come out there and fight you in the yard.”
Left to right: Ayden Holland, 17, Logan Huber, 18, and Reid Mitchell, 17, were charged with aggravated assault and released on bond. (Photo Credit: Lake Jackson Police Department)
The attack is alleged to have been over a girl, namely Mitchell’s then-girlfriend, but this is unconfirmed. Hagan’s brother says that Mitchell was angry that the girl had chosen to move on from him.
“These high school boys and young men, they feel like they own these girls that they date, even when they break up,” Hagan’s brother added. “They think they can tell them who they can take a picture with and who they can stand with and who their next boyfriend can be.”
Following the attack, Mitchell was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. He was released on a $20,000 bond. Huber and Holland were charged with aggravated assault and released out on bail. However, Hagan’s family wasn’t about to rely on these singular charges to obtain justice.
