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Provo • On the day he was sentenced to prison for violently attacking five of his classmates in a high school locker room, 16-year-old Luke Dollahite offered a simple apology.

He was sorry, he said, to the five teen boys he made his victims. Sorry to his own family. Sorry to his community.

"The mercy I've been shown," he said Thursday, "I don't deserve any of it."

Dollahite was sentenced 10 years to life in Utah State Prison for the Nov. 15 rampage — in which he attacked one student with a wooden staff, then stabbed four others before stabbing himself in a locker room at Mountain View High School.

In April, he admitted to four counts of attempted murder in juvenile court and pleaded guilty to a fifth charge in the adult court system. Thursday's sentencing marked the end of Dollahite's criminal court case — but the victims and their families told the judge that they have not entirely healed.

There still are physical scars, reminders of the terror the boys experienced that day. There's permanent nerve damage, surgeries and physical therapy. And there was the emotional pain of anger, doubt and fear as the victims returned to school and tried to resume a normal life.

"I just couldn't understand why anyone whould do this to us," one of the victims said Thursday. "We were just in high school."

Although some parents and victims held no animosity toward Dollahite or his family, others felt justice could only truly be had if the teen were never free again.

A juvenile court judge in April ordered Dollahite to serve an indeterminate amount of a time in a secure juvenile care facility, a term that cannot go beyond his 21st birthday. Once the Youth Parole Authority decides Dollahite has served his time in the juvenile court, he will be moved to the adult prison.

The unique resolution, prosecutors say, will allow the teen to receive treatment at the juvenile facility before he transfers to the adult prison.

Deputy Utah County Attorney Sam Pead said outside court that he "takes comfort" in knowing that Utah's parole board will be able to look at Dollahite's progress down the road and has the ability to release him if he's rehabilitated — but also has the option to keep him incarcerated.

"I hope he can be rehabilitated," Pead said after the sentencing. "… If he's released, and if that's because he's been rehabilitated, then great. But if he chooses not to be, or can't be [rehabilitated], society is protected and they can keep him behind bars."

All five injured students survived the November attack, though several boys suffered lasting injuries. One boy told a juvenile court judge in April, and recounted again Thursday, that Dollahite stabbed him once in the neck, attacked another teen, returned to him and stabbed him again on the other side of his neck. He took a final breath, he remembered, and played dead until help arrived.

"I looked up at the ceiling and thought this was the end for me," he said. "This is how I was going to die."

Defense attorney Mike Esplin said that hearing the boy and other victims share their experiences in court has helped Dollahite understand and appreciate what he had done. At the time of the stabbings, Esplin said, Dollahite did not realize how far the pain and fear would ripple through the community beyond those he injured.

"It was like [he] was looking in a tunnel," the defense attorney said.

Prior to going to school on Nov. 15, Dollahite gathered a bo staff, knives and other "tools to inflict physical violence against others," prosecutors wrote in charging documents. He began his attack by striking a teen with the bo staff, which broke, before stabbing the four other boys and himself.

He later told police that he was not targeting anyone in particular but was trying to create as many victims as possible. During his juvenile court sentencing, his parents apologized and said their son suffered from mental illness.

The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not identify juveniles charged with crimes unless they have been certified for adult court.