07/29/00
By GARY McELROY
Staff Reporter

Five young men who spent last weekend in jail in connection with a March 5 beating at the Country Club of Mobile have each agreed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor offense of third-degree assault, according to five sources connected with the case.

Their weekend stay of July 21-24 at the Mobile County Metro Jail will be the defendants' only time behind bars as long as they stay out of trouble, based on a plea agreement worked out between their lawyers and the Mobile County district attorney's office, sources say. Any plea agreements still must be approved by a district court judge.

The defendants surrendered to authorities July 21 and were incarcerated after being charged with third-degree assault, according to Assistant District Attorney Mike Anderson.

The five are accused of beating Christopher Gruenewald Jr., 19, of Mobile, on the country club's golf course in the early morning hours of March 5.

According to sources, the beating occurred following a confrontation between Gruenewald and some of the defendants at the 19th Hole, an Old Shell Road bar.

Rumors about the incident have flown for months in and around the comfortable neighborhoods that comprise the Spring Hill area and the Country Club of Mobile.

Details surrounding the incident at the bar remain sketchy. But sources say it principally involved Avery and Gruenewald, who apparently had a fight.

Up to four more arrests could occur in the case, according to sources who say the defendants have given statements that helped lead investigators to additional suspects in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.

None of the defendants was available for comment Friday.

According to five sources closely involved in the case, the plea agreement sets out the following terms:

Each defendant will be sentenced to one year in jail - the maximum allowed under Alabama law for a third-degree assault. That jail sentence will then be suspended to include only time served.

The five men spent three full nights and at least two days in the Mobile County Metro Jail. They turned themselves in at the jail in the early evening of July 21, a Friday, and made no attempt to bond out until Monday, sources said.

Each defendant will receive two years of probation, and must report regularly to a probation officer. If any of them commits another crime during this period, his probation would be revoked automatically. He could then be jailed to serve out the original one-year sentence.

Each defendant agrees to fully cooperate with police investigators and tell everything he knows about the events of the night that Gruenewald was attacked.

Each defendant must perform eight weeks of community service. A portion of that service, sources say, will include appearing in a video for teen-agers to talk about the perils of alcohol consumption and/or speaking to youth groups on the same subject.

District Attorney John Tyson Jr. acknowledged that the five men will be arraigned together in Presiding Mobile County District Judge Judson Wells' fourth-floor courtroom in Government Plaza at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 7.

"I heard it would be coming through district court," Wells said when asked about the pending arraignment. "If it winds up here, of course, I can't comment on the merits since I am handling the case."

He also would not say what he would do once the plea agreements are put before him. "I can tell you plea bargains are fairly common," the judge said.

Christopher Gruenewald Sr., the father of the victim, declined to volunteer particulars of the plea agreement but acknowledged that details related to him by the Mobile Register conformed with his understanding of the agreement.

The elder Gruenewald, a Mobile lawyer, also said he had no major problems with the plea deal.

"My family and I are satisfied with this," Gruenewald said Friday. "We think the D.A.'s office and the police did an excellent job and those guys are being held responsible for what they did, and we are satisfied with that."

Gruenewald said that as a result of the beating, his son underwent reconstructive surgery on his face and suffered damage to one eye. In addition, he said, his son was diagnosed about a month ago with "brain trauma" attributed to his injuries March 5.

Asked if he and his family had any plans to file civil lawsuits as a result of the beating, he said: "I really don't want to answer that right now."

It was unclear Friday whether any of the five defendants have previous police records. The beating victim, the younger Gruenewald, does have a record. It includes charges of unauthorized use of a vehicle about a year ago in which he took a car without permission and wrecked it; a charge of the theft of beer from a convenience store in Theodore last October; and an arrest last month in west Mobile on a charge of illegal possession of alcohol and marijuana.

Skip Brutkiewicz, the younger Gruenewald's attorney, confirmed the record. He said his client pleaded guilty in the automobile incident and was released on "good behavior." Brutkiewicz said the latter two charges are pending and that Gruenewald had pleaded innocent in those cases.

The arrests in the golf course beating came following an investigation conducted by Mobile Police Department detective Cpl. Glenn Garside.

"Glenn worked extremely hard on this case," Anderson said Friday.

Garside and Anderson traveled to Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and other northern Alabama cities on Thursday as they continued their investigation.

Sources say two additional suspects live in the Birmingham area and two are in Tuscaloosa. A fifth suspect is traveling in Europe and is scheduled to return Aug. 15, they said.

Neither Tyson nor Anderson would discuss the possibility of more arrests.

"I would like to officially respond to your inquiries," Tyson said, "but the prosecution standards we operate under do not allow me at this point. It's still under investigation. Our work is not finished."

A woman who resides on Country Club Road told the Register Friday that she witnessed the beating from her home and called 911. She spoke on the condition her name would not be used.

Police confirm that she made the emergency call at about 1:30 on the morning of March 5.

The woman said she went to bed about 10 p.m. the night of Aug. 4. About three hours later, "I was sound asleep. Something woke me up. I thought the children had left the television on."

She said that as she neared a window in the den that looks out on to Country Club Road and the golf course "I heard shouts, pieces of hollering, shouts and screams. I looked out. I was just in shock. It was like a panic."

Outside the window, about 60 feet away, the woman said, she saw "some young men beating another young man very badly."

She called 911 and was crouched down at her window as she talked with the dispatcher, she said. "I didn't want them to see me," she said. As she watched, she described what she was seeing to the dispatcher, she said.

"It was so brutal," she said. "They were wailing, fists pumping, arms and elbows just slugging away. They had him down on the ground on his back. There were six or eight people. It looked like they were beating the life out of him.

"This one person was running up, taking three jogging steps and as high as he could just stomped down on what looked like his head," the witness said. "Then he would back up and do it again."

She said street lights and headlights illuminated the area and she could clearly see what was happening.

She said the crowd stopped the beating, walked away as if leaving, then returned to the victim "and started working him over again."

Soon after and before police arrived, the crowd, including the victim, left the area, the woman said.

She said the next time she saw some of the young men was earlier this summer when she appeared before a Mobile County grand jury.

She said she walked into a waiting area in the courthouse side of Mobile's Government Plaza "and it was like hitting a brick wall. I immediately recognized, 100 percent, two of them."