| Author | Message | ||
     Corporatemonkey |
I don't know if anyone remembers but in June of 2007 there was a gruesome shooting in front of my building. A wack job had used a rifle on some guy. The bio-splatter was all over my front door.  Well the wack job finally got sentenced. Not quite as long as I hoped, but at least he is off the streets. The article below is a little off. One of the shots went through the victims head. That is what ended up on my front door.  http://www.seattlepi.com/local/404364_harris28.htm l Man gets 26 years for fatal downtown Seattle shooting By LEVI PULKKINEN SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF A 27-year-old accused of gunning down another man on a downtown Seattle street was sentenced Friday to 26 years in prison. Earlier this year, Jasper Harris entered a modified guilty plea to the June 22, 2007 shooting, which left Carlos Rodriguez dead and a second man injured. According to police, Harris had been in a verbal altercation with Rodriguez moments before he shot him in the 200 block of Pine Street. After a brief argument, Harris went to his car, retrieved an SKS semi-automatic assault rifle and shot Rodriguez twice in the back. One bullet passed through Rodriguez and struck another man in the leg. Police arrested Harris minutes after the shooting, which occurred at about 10:30 p.m. Officers found him hiding inside a garbage container with the rifle. Arguing for the maximum allowed sentence, senior deputy prosecutor Amy Montgomery pointed out that, at the time Harris opened fire, the city street was full of pedestrians enjoying the summer evening. "The defendant was lucky only two people were hit that night," Montgomery told King County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ramsdell. Defense attorney Peter Connick urged Ramsdell to impose a 15-year sentence, arguing that Harris believed he was acting in self-defense when he shot Rodriguez. Harris, Connick said, believed Rodriguez and others had attacked him a week earlier, and that men associated with Rodriguez had been following him prior to the shooting. Neither Connick nor Montgomery elaborated on what motivated the earlier attack. Addressing the judge, Harris apologized for the shooting. "I'm so sorry for the pain and hurt I put Carlos Rodriguez's family through," Harris said. "If I could take back that day, I would." Addressing the judge, one of Rodriguez's seven children urged Ramsdell not to order the exceptionally low sentence for the second-degree murder and second-degree assault charges he faced. "Every day," the girl said, "I have to live without my dad." A 15-year prison term, the girl's mother said, "isn't justice." Ramsdell agreed, imposing a sentence two years short of the maximum allowed given Harris' prior criminal record. After ordering the sentence, Ramsdell noted that Harris, at the time of the shooting, wore a memorial T-shirt bearing a photo of his younger brother, who had been shot to death months before in New Orleans. Harris' mother, the judge said, "lost one son as a victim, and another as a defendant. "To me, that's the real tragedy on his side." |
