Marine Sgt. William Michael Brown was fatally stabbed in Waikiki last year after a pack of juveniles mobbed him and his friends, Deputy Prosecutor Ashley Tanaka told a state judge Tuesday.

An Oahu grand jury returned an indictment Tuesday charging one of the juveniles, Nicholas E. Torres, with murder. Torres was 16 years old at the time of the stabbing and is only 17 now. He was charged as an adult because a state Family Court judge waived the court’s jurisdiction over him last week.

Tanaka told Circuit Judge Colette Garibaldi that Brown, 23, and three friends, two men and one woman, were walking in Waikiki on Oct. 21 last year when two juvenile females approached the group and offered to sell them marijuana. That was at about 1 a.m.

Brown and his friends told the girls, “Don’t you look a little young. You still have braces. What are you doing out this late,” Tanaka said.

At that point Tanaka said a group of around 10 to 15 other juveniles, both boys and girls, surrounded Brown and his friends. An argument escalated into a physical fight, during which one of the juveniles grabbed Brown’s female friend’s purse and Torres stabbed Brown with a hunting knife, Tanaka said.

The knife punctured Brown’s heart and left lung. A city ambulance transported Brown in critical condition from the corner of Kalakaua and Royal Hawaiian avenues to The Queen’s Medical Center where he later died.

Police said one of the other juveniles, a then-15-year-old boy, told them it was Torres who stabbed Brown. They recovered the knife after looking at surveillance video showing Torres bend down after the stabbing near a storm drain at the intersection of Kalakaua and Seaside avenues.

Garibaldi confirmed Torres’ bail at $500,000. Tanaka said Torres remains in custody at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility.

Brown was a mortarman assigned to Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe.