Men get plea deal in drunken Columbus shooting that left one suspect’s cousin dead
The gunman accused of killing a 24-year-old Columbus woman by shooting through her family’s front door pleaded guilty Monday, and so did the victim’s cousin, who brought him there as a guest.
Accepting a negotiated plea deal Monday in the 2018 death of LaShay Ford were Carl James McClendon, 38, who fired the fatal shot, and Dewayne Marquis Jones, 40, the cousin.
“I’m really hurt that’s my own blood,” Ford’s mother LaQuanda Brown testified during Jones’ sentencing, telling him: “I hope you remember this. I hope you remember her, because she ain’t coming back. I won’t get to see her no more, but you get to come home.... You don’t have to live the way you were living before. Get your life together.”
Besides murder, both men had faced multiple counts of aggravated assault and other felony charges for shooting into the home after they arrived there drunk and boisterous, and Brown told them to leave.
The dispute turned physical when the three unwelcome guests were shoved outside, where Jones fired a .380-caliber handgun into the air, Chief Assistant District Attorney Shaneka Terry told the court. That incited McClendon to shoot a .40-caliber pistol through the door, killing Ford and wounding two others.
A third suspect in the case was just arrested this year, and still awaits his day in Muscogee Superior Court.
The plea deal
McClendon pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and three counts of aggravated assault. Judge Gil McBride sentenced him to 40 years, with 25 to serve in prison and the rest on probation.
Jones pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated assault. McBride sentenced him to 20 years, with 10 to serve in prison. Each defendant will get credit for the time he already has spent in jail.
Terry told the court Jones deserved some consideration for turning himself in and cooperating with police. He fled to Mexico, after the Jan. 24, 2018, shooting, but later contacted detectives and came back to surrender.
The third suspect, Herk James Ellis, 36, of New York City, was captured this past January, and charged with murder and aggravated assault.
Among those testifying at the sentencing Monday was Brittnee Banks, who was wounded when the gunfire erupted at Brown’s Wickham Drive home around 10:45 that night.
Banks at the time was 21 years old and seven months pregnant. A bullet hit her in the leg.
In court with her 3-year-old daughter, she said the ensuing trauma put her life on hold, and she still fears going out and trusting others, among other issues.
“I just want to say that, even though I’m still here, I feel like my life was still taken,” she testified. “I can’t go anywhere. I can’t do anything, and I still can’t live my life, because that’s taking place in my head every single day, every single night.”
She told the two men she forgave them.
After the sentencing, Brown said she felt Ford finally got justice.
“She’s not here to witness it, but I’m here for her,” she said. “My daughter got justice today, and I can have peace.”
She said Ford’s life was just starting, before a bullet cut it short.
Her daughter wanted to be a social worker: “She wanted to help little kids. She wanted to be there for kids, like a caseworker,” the mother said.
“She had just graduated from college. She didn’t really get a chance. She just got hired the same day she got murdered. She never really got a chance to live her life, because it was taken too early.”
This story was originally published May 18, 2021 at 11:57 AM.