A court proceeding for a 17-year-old boy accused of crashing an ATV and killing a friend while driving drunk in February is on hold for a month.

But already, in-court debate has provided new insight into the Feb. 27 tragedy as well as what happened in the hours and months of investigation that followed.

The defendant, who is not being named because the charges are pending in juvenile court, is charged with homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence.

Investigators allege the boy’s blood-alcohol level was at least four times the legal limit for teen drivers when he lost control of his ATV between Butternut and Spruce roads in Fairview Township.

The rollover wreck killed passenger Briggs R. Buck, 16, of Chicora.

On Wednesday, the teenager was scheduled for a pre-adjudication conference in Butler County Juvenile Court.

However, county Assistant District Attorney Russ Karl asked President Judge Thomas Doerr to delay the proceeding while prosecutors gather information and decide whether they will ask the court to move the case to adult court.

The boy’s pre-adjudication conference, which is when it will be decided whether the teen will enter a guilty plea, is rescheduled for Jan. 27.

Among the details to be considered in the meantime, Karl said, would be the boy’s community and school records.

At the request of the defense, the judge added to the mix orders for psychiatric and neurological evaluations.

The physical exam is to determine if the boy, who said he’d previously suffered concussions, has any ongoing medical issues.

The psychiatric evaluation, said defense attorney Jack Haller, is needed to provide insight about his client. However, Haller indicated that the evaluation also could possibly be used by the defense to raise competency issues.

To this point, Karl told the judge, prosecutors have not been made aware of the boy having any type of mental health diagnosis.

Judge Doerr decided that while this is going on, the boy will remain at his parents’ home, but on house arrest with permission to leave only for school and medical reasons.

Karl, who argued in favor of detaining the boy while the case is pending, stressed the seriousness of the allegations and noted the alleged incident involved alcohol and occurred about seven months after the boy was prosecuted for a drug related offense in the Clarion County juvenile court system.

The crash, Karl said, happened while the Clarion County case was being transferred to Butler County Court and “(the boy) was as good as on probation.”

The details of that case, filed in July 2014, are not public. However, immediately before the Wednesday hearing the boy had a different hearing in the same courtroom that was not open to the public because it involved only misdemeanor allegations.

Additionally, Karl claimed that after the fatal crash, the defendant provided information to police that was misleading “or absolutely just lies” about the circumstances of the crash that caused the investigation to take a significant amount of time and at points even to follow leads that were not true.

For example, Karl said the boy told his father and investigators that he dropped Buck off at his home the night of the crash. And the boy claimed he did not know who was in a second vehicle at the crash site.

After further investigation and reconstruction of the crash, investigators believe the boy left his friend on the roadside and drove home and went to bed without using his cellular telephone to call for help.

Additionally, investigators allege the second vehicle at the crash site was the boy’s uncle, 33-year-old Steven Ray Rider Jr. of Parker Township.

Haller, in response to the prosecutor’s statements, asked the judge not to detain his client because the boy has support from his parents and in the community and he has been doing well for the last two months. The boy’s parents attended the hearing.

Haller stressed that the boy was young, 16, at the time of the alleged incident and heavily under the influence of alcohol.

“He was a minor who got caught up in an adult activity,” Haller said.

Investigators have accused the boy’s uncle of providing both boys with beer and liquor that night.

Rider is scheduled to appear Jan. 5 for his preliminary hearing before District Judge Lewis Stoughton in Chicora. In addition to involuntary manslaughter, he’s charged with two counts each of child endangerment, reckless endangerment and providing alcohol to minors, all misdemeanors. He’s free on $250,000 bail.