Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Desper gets 20-40 years for road-rage murder
David Desper, the driver whose single gunshot out his passenger window claimed the life of a promising West Chester-area teenager on her way home from shopping for the start of college, was sentenced Thursday to 20 to 40 years in state prison for her murder.
“I am so sorry,” Desper told Judge Ann Marie Wheatcraft before she imposed the maximum sentence for third-degree murder, along with a concurrent one to two years for possession of an instrument of crime.
“I would do anything to take it back,” Desper said. “I would rather have shot myself. All I want to do is tell her how sorry I am. I just want to put my arms around her and tel her how sorry I am.”
“I messed up,” the Delaware County man continued through sobs and tears. “I messed up.”
Wheatcraft handed down the sentence after hearing more than three hours of highly emotional testimony from the family, friends, and supporters of victim Bianca Nichole Roberson, as well as those who know Desper as a kindhearted man who made a horrifying mistake when he jockeyed with Roberson in a “cat-andmouse” game of road rage.
The large courtroom at the Chester County Justice Center, filled to capacity, was awash with grief and anger during the sentencing hearing. Roberson’s mother and father wept while recalling their youngest child, Desper cried openly while pleading for forgiveness, and attorneys on both sides of the case wiped away tears at various points during the proceeding.
Even Judge Wheatcraft could be seen holding back her emotions while she read her sentence.
“The criminal justice system is completely inadequate as a means of healing or relief,” the judge said addressing Roberson’s parents, seated in the front row of the courtroom. “No amount of jail time for David Desper will bring your daughter back.”
The judge declared that she believed Desper’s crime was born of anger at, not fear of, another driver on the road, as his defense had contended. He was upset with the driver of a car he saw trying to get ahead of him at a section of Route 100 slimmed down from one to two lanes as it enters Route 202, she said.
“I believe that you would take it all back if you could, not only for you own good but for the good of the Roberson family” Wheatcraft told Desper as he stood before her. “But I don’t believe you were afraid. If you were afraid, you would have hit the brakes.”
Wheatcraft noted that even after the shooting, Desper bided his time before turning himself in to West Goshen police and Chester County Detectives investigating the shooting, which drew regional and national attention. He went to work the following day, took a trip to the beach, and did not tell his parents about hat had happened until three days later.
“The only thing you did right was to plead guilty and spare Bianca’s family and friends from the horror of a trial.”
Desper, 29, of Trainer, Delaware County, pleaded guilty in September to charges of third-degree murder and possession of an instrument of crime for the June 28, 2017, fatal shooting of the 18-year-old Roberson, a then-recent graduate of West Chester’s Bayard Rustin High School.
His plea followed the decision by the county District Attorney’s Office to withdraw a charge of firstdegree murder in exchange for a guaranteed conviction for murder, rather than a chanced verdict at trial of manslaughter.
Desper has been held in Chester County Prison since his arrest in July 2017. Unless he files an appeal of his sentence, he will be transferred to the state prison system within the month. He had no prior criminal history before the incident in which he shot and killed Roberson.
After the sentencing, the victims’ father stood outside the District Attorney’s Office and declared himself satisfied with Wheatcraft’s sentence, while at the same time noting that it will do nothing to return his family’s life to its previous joy over his daughter’s blossoming life of opportunity. She was destined for Jacksonville University that summer to begin studying criminal justice, hoping to become an FBI agent.
“Everybody is still in pain for it,” Rodney Roberson told reporters. “No matter how long you sentenced him, it will never bring our daughter back.”
Michelle Roberson, the victim’s woe-stricken mother whose heartbreaking letter to the judge was filled with fond memories of her daughter and white hot rage at the man responsible for her death, said as she left the DA’s Office that she was satisfied with Wheatcraft’s sentence.
“I am glad that justice was served for her,” she said.
Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei, along with his colleague Assistant District Attorney Christopher Miller, and police investigators Detective Jose Torres of West Goshen and Detective Ben Martin of the Chester County Detectives, said that they were “extremely pleased with the sentence,” despite it falling short of the 22½ to 45 years they had recommended.
“It did take into account the impact that this has had on the Roberson family, their friends, and all of the community,” Frei said. “We hope that it provides a little bit of closure to the Robersons. But Bianca is gone, and nothing is going to change that.”
Desper’s attorney, Daniel McGarrigle, who had argued that the steps his client had taken since the time of the shooting to accept responsibility should prove him worthy of a mitigated sentence of fewer than 10 years, declined to comment after the sentencing.
During the proceeding, Roberson was remembered by those who spoke as a caring, talented and dedicated young woman, full of promise, who, in the words of the superintendent of West Chester schools, “always fought for the underdog.”
Many urged Wheatcraft to impose the maximum sentence of Desper, not only because he took Roberson’s life, but because his recklessness had affected so many others in the community — friends, teachers, and those she cared for at the senior living facility where she worked.
“Bianca was a child who was always happy, and she brought joy to everyone around her,” said Rodney Roberson. “With adults, she was shy and respectful. With her friends, she was kind, gentle and funny. To me, she was the smartest and most beautiful young women in the world.”
Rodney Roberson noted painfully the irony that he had moved his family from Philadelphia to Chester County because he believed they would be safer away from the city. “We wanted her to grow up around nice people in a nice place.”
He confronted Desper directly in his statement to Wheatcraft, asking, “Why in God’s name did you soot my daughter? Because she was young? because she was black? Because she was a girl? Because you wanted to go first on the road? Because you had a bad day?”
He also recounted a special song his daughter had for him, “Dancing With My Father” by the singer Luther Vandross. It is a song, he said, about a daughter longing to dance with her departed father once again.
“Your Honor, I would love to dance with my daughter again,” he said. “But I never will.”
James Scanlon, the West Chester Area School District superintendent, recalled how many of Roberson’s former teachers remembered the impact she had on them even after she had left their classrooms. “This is an extremely painful, emotional time, clearly for the Robersons, but also for our entire school district family.
“Bianca was killed nearly a year and a half ago, but the loss of this beautiful young woman still weigh very heavily on everyone who had the pleasure of knowing her.”
Also speaking were her grandmother, Josie TillerPerry, and her pastor, Rev. Wayne E. Croft Sr. of St. Paul’s Baptist Church.
Laura Williams, the mother of Roberson’s best friend, Laura Williams, read a letter her daughter had written for Roberson’s funeral, but was too traumatized to read herself on Thursday. It shared memories of their friendship, including an errorplagued camp-out in which they ended up eating takeout pizza in the rain in a friend’s backyard.
The girl’s mother said Roberson’s murderer, “haunts her dreams,” to the point of not wanting to fall asleep and “meet him in her dreams.
“David Desper took many lives that night,” Laura Williams said. “the rippling effect of this act continues on and will continue to do so for years to come.”
The final person to deliver a victim impact statement was Michelle Roberson, who could be seen sobbing in her seat during the other presentations. Her delivery, however, was a powerful one despite her overwhelming grief. She spoke of her love for her daughter, but also her fury at Desper for taking her away.
“She was a special person, unlike anyone I have ever met,” Michelle Roberson said, remembering a time she convinced her to sit and eat with an elderly woman alone at the Exton Square Mall food court. “That’s when I knew she was going to try to save the world for the ugliness that we are in. And looked what happened; the ugliness took her away from us.”
Michelle Roberson said she believed that Desper had acted out of racial animus against her daughter. Desper is white; the Robersons are black. “What David Desper did to Bianca was more than just road rage, but an ugly act of racism,” he said. “I have seen evil and racism and I know what it looks like when I see it.”
But more than that, she described for Wheatcraft how the loss of her daughter — after the earlier loss of her only son, Mykel — had deeply affected her.
“My grief is profound,” she said, standing at the court podium dress in an outfit of purple, her daughter’s favorite color. “It is persistent. I can’t run from it, I can’t sleep it away, not can I hide it. I can’t reason with it and I can’t wish it away even though I try.
“I struggle to re-define everything about me because of the decision David Desper made.”
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan, call 610-696-1544.
To contact Staff Writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.