Dillard, Presiding Judge. A. A., a juvenile, was adjudicated delinquent on a count of reckless conduct, a misdemeanor.[1] She now appeals from this adjudication, arguing that (1) the trial court erred in its interpretation of reckless conduct under OCGA § 16-5-60, (2) the trial court erred in permitting the State to admit text messages without sufficient authentication, and (3) the evidence is insufficient to sustain her adjudication of delinquency. For the reasons set forth infra, we affirm. The record shows that on January 6, 2021, an investigator with the Coweta County Sheriff’s Department responded to a residence following a juvenile complaint. A. A. lived at the residence with her legal guardian, who reported finding a cell phone containing a video depicting A. A. inserting a toothbrush into her vagina in the bathroom where the guardian’s two biological children kept their toothbrushes. And just a week or so before this incident, the guardian took A. A. to receive a second treatment for gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted illness. Thereafter, the investigator spoke with A. A. about the video, and she admitted to inserting at least one of the children’s toothbrushes into her vagina, that she was the person on the video, and that she did so because she found the children “annoying.” A petition for a finding of delinquency was issued in the aftermath of these admissions, and A. A. was adjudicated as such for reckless conduct. This appeal follows. 1. For starters, A. A. argues the trial court erred in its interpretation of the reckless-conduct statute, OCGA § 16-5-60. We disagree. A. A. contends the statute cannot be read as “relating to the negligent or purposeful spread of any disease both because of the content of the statute as a whole and because of the logical implication of interpreting the statute in that way.” In particular, A. A. notes that the relevant statute subsequently mentions only HIV and no other communicable diseases. She also discusses at length the General Assembly’s enactments—and decisions not to enact—various rules or prohibitions in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as evidence that the legislature does not intend to criminalize the negligent spread of all communicable diseases. We are not persuaded by these arguments. To begin with, we need not address whether A. A. correctly asserts that the trial court erred in its interpretation that OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) expresses an “intent” by the General Assembly to apply only to those “infectious diseases with serious public health implications that spread through contact with an infected person’s blood, saliva, mucus or other bodily fluids.” Indeed, whether the trial court answered that question correctly has no bearing on A. A.’s argument that OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) does not apply to any communicable disease. Moreover, we likewise need not address A. A.’s argument that criminalizing the negligent spread of communicable diseases under OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) is overly broad in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the facts of this case do not concern that disease or the ways in which it is transmitted. To put it plainly, what the General Assembly has or has not done in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, or whatever the numerous legislators’ personal interpretations of OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) may be, is ultimately of no consequence. This Court’s only concern is with the plain meaning of the statute, which is rightfully our sole focus in determining the General Assembly’s “intent.”[2] To that end, in interpreting any statute, we necessarily begin our analysis with “familiar and binding canons of construction.”[3] And in considering the meaning of a statute, our charge is to “presume that the General Assembly meant what it said and said what it meant.”[4] As a result, we must afford the statutory text its plain and ordinary meaning,[5] consider the text contextually,[6] read the text “in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the English language would,”[7] and seek to “avoid a construction that makes some language mere surplusage.”[8] And when the language of a statute is plain and susceptible of only one natural and reasonable construction, “courts must construe the statute accordingly.”[9] Turning to the text at issue, OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) provides as follows: A person who causes bodily harm to or endangers the bodily safety of another person by consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his act or omission will cause harm or endanger the safety of the other person and the disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation is guilty of a misdemeanor. So, while A. A. is correct that OCGA § 16-5-60 goes on to discuss HIV specifically in other subsections of the statute, it does so in terms of criminalizing instances in which a person who is knowingly infected with HIV does not disclose this information before engaging in sexual intercourse or sexual acts with another, sharing hypodermic needles or syringes, performing sexual acts for money, soliciting or submitting to sodomy for money, or donating blood or other bodily fluid.[10] The statute further goes on to criminalize the knowing attempt to infect a peace officer or correctional officer with HIV or hepatitis.[11] But none of this additional statutory language suggests the General Assembly did not intend for OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) to encompass other communicable diseases. Notably, unlike OCGA § 16-5-60 (b), these latter provisions constitute felonies.[12] And all OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) requires, by its plain terms, is proof that a person “consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his act would harm [another person] or endanger [the other person's] safety.”[13] Thus, the trial court did not err in concluding that OCGA § 16-5-60 (b) could apply to the potential transmission of gonorrhea which, as it happens, the General Assembly has elsewhere “declared to be contagious, infectious, communicable, and dangerous to the public health.”[14] 2. Next, A. A. contends the trial court erred by admitting text messages that were unsupported by proper authentication. Again, we disagree. At the bench trial, the State introduced screen shots of text messages between A. A. and another individual. And while those messages do not show the time or date on which they were sent and received, A. A. mentions within them that she is at “a foster home called angels house” and her guardian found out about “the toothbrush thing.” Additionally, A. A.’s guardian testified that the text messages were found on a phone A. A. used, which was the same phone that stored the toothbrush video. And in the text messages, A. A. disclosed to the other individual that her guardian had “found out about the toothbrush thing but [A. A.] had washed them off and everything after.” A. A. objected to the admission of the text messages on the basis that they lacked authentication, but the trial court overruled this objection, finding the State sufficiently authenticated them. Nevertheless, A. A. argues on appeal that her guardian’s testimony regarding the text messages was insufficient to authenticate them because she was not the recipient of those messages. In doing so, A. A. contrasts this case from those in which texts were authenticated by a participant in the text exchange,[15] when a phone was confiscated from the person who sent the text messages,[16] or when cell-phone records demonstrated the subscriber’s identity.[17] In considering A. A.’s argument, our analysis necessarily begins with OCGA § 249901 (a), which provides that: The requirement of authentication or identification as a condition precedent to admissibility shall be satisfied by evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims.[18] And OCGA § 24-9-901 (b) describes, but does not limit, examples of means by which authentication or identification may be accomplished, including “[t]estimony of a witness with knowledge that a matter is what it is claimed to be” and “[a]ppearance, contents, substance, internal patterns, or other distinctive characteristics, taken in conjunction with circumstances.”[19] Indeed, there are “no special rules under Georgia law governing the authentication of electronic documents or communications.”[20] As a result, after the party seeking to authenticate evidence “presents a prima facie case that the evidence is what it purports to be, the evidence is properly admitted, leaving the ultimate question of authenticity to be decided by the jury.”[21] That said, we acknowledge that every form of electronic communication “can be ‘spoofed,’ ‘hacked,’ or ‘forged,’ but this does not and cannot mean that courts should reject any and all such communications.”[22] Indeed, the vast majority of these electronic communications are “just as they appear to be—quite authentic.”[23] And here, we must decide whether the trial court abused its discretion in finding the relevant text messages authentic and admitting them into evidence.[24] We conclude that it did not. In this case, the State presented sufficient evidence to authenticate the text messages from the phone when the content of those messages—taken together with the fact that they were on the same phone A. A. admittedly used to film herself inserting a toothbrush into her vagina—all supported the guardian’s testimony that A. A. was the one who used that particular cell phone.[25] 3. Finally, on the issue of sufficiency of the evidence, A. A. argues about evidence the State did not present, such as testimony to identify whether the toothbrush belonged to her guardian’s son (who was the named victim), or whether gonorrhea would be transmissible by a person who has received treatment. We find these arguments unavailing. When an appellate court reviews the sufficiency of the evidence, the relevant question is “whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”[26]And here, on the issue of the victim’s identity, A. A. asserts the State failed to prove the crime was committed as alleged because the son of A. A.’s guardian was identified as the victim in the petition for delinquency, but no evidence or testimony directly linked the toothbrush at issue with him. But viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the juvenile court as the trier of fact, there was evidence A. A. inserted more than one toothbrush into her vagina and that both toothbrushes belonged to the children. Indeed, A. A. said in her text message to a friend that she washed “them” off afterwards. There was, then, sufficient evidence by which the court could conclude that more than one child’s toothbrush was involved, thus including the brush belonging to the guardian’s son. In the alternative, the court could have found that both children used the same toothbrush given that the investigator referred to it as “the children’s toothbrush” when questioning A. A. As to the complaint regarding a lack of medical evidence to demonstrate whether gonorrhea is transmissible under these circumstances, there was testimony that gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease for which A. A. had recently been treated and that she placed an object used orally by others—i.e., a toothbrush or toothbrushes—into her vagina. As a result, the trial court was presented with sufficient evidence to conclude that A. A. “consciously disregard[ed] a substantial and unjustifiable risk that [her] act . . . [would] cause harm or endanger the safety of the other person” and that her “disregard constitute[d] a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation.”[27] For all these reasons, we affirm A. A.’s adjudication of delinquency. Judgment affirmed. Miller, P. J., and Mercier, J., concur.
