Mother protests sentence given to daughter’s assailant
A youth accused of shooting a sixteen year old girl in September of 1998 pleaded guilty to the use of deadly means of harm and was fined and ordered to pay the victim a settlement today in the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Troadio Gonzalez ordered 17 year old Kenrick Nuñez to pay five thousand dollars to the court and two thousand dollars to his victim Keiva Leslie. Her mother Shawn Graham was not happy with the proceedings, or the fact that Nuñez is back out on the street.
Shawn Graham, Mother of Victim
“Yesterday they had the case but yesterday they never gave me a chance to go in the court and say anything in the case. They just make we sit down outside in the background and they try the case themselves. They tell me today they will sentence him. Well I say I should come and here the sentence.
When I came the man told him that how they charge him five thousand dollars and two thousand dollars to my daughter. I don’t think that is fair because my daughter has to live with lead in her liver. She is not well yet and now Kenrick is walking in the streets free, free, free.”
Because Nuñez pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of use of deadly means of harm, the charge of attempted murder was dropped. On September 27, 1998 Nuñez went to Keiva Leslie’s house and told her he would shoot her because she, “liked to walk about too much”. He then placed a bullet in the gun, put it to Leslie’s side and fired. If Nuñez cannot pay his fines, which total seven thousand dollars, he will spend the next three years at Hattieville.
In another Supreme Court case today also before Chief Justice Troadio Gonzalez Darwin Jones was also ordered to pay a court fine and compensation to his victim Kenneth Gordon when he pleaded guilty to grevious harm. Jones stabbed Gordon in the chest with an ice pick as Gordon was walking home with friends after a dance in June of 1998. Darwin Jones will have to pay three thousand five hundred dollars to the court and five hundred dollars to Kenneth Gordon or spend one year in prison.
