Philly man gets 15-30 years in fatal Colwyn shooting
‘You took half of me,’ victim’s girlfriend tells killer.
MEDIA COURTHOUSE » A Philadelphia man who was scheduled for trial Tuesday in the 2017 shooting death of Ron Weston instead elected to plead guilty to charges of third-degree murder and conspiracy to robbery.
Dorian Young-Jenkins, 30, of the 400 block of North Daggett Street, was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in a state prison under the negotiated guilty plea worked out by Assistant District Attorney Gina Gorbey and defense counsel Mark Much.
Additional charges of firstand second-degree murder, criminal homicide, robbery, reckless endangerment and firearms offenses were dismissed.
Colwyn police officers responded to the victim’s home on the 200 block of South Fourth Street about 9:36 a.m. Oct. 16, 2017, for report of a subject shot.
Upon entry, officers found Weston suffering from a single gunshot wound to his chest. Weston was alert and talking with police before he was transported to Penn Presbyterian Hospital, where he succumbed to his injury.
“There was a knock on the door, (his girlfriend) opened the door. The shooter stepped in and shot him,” Colwyn Police Chief Bryan Hills said at the time
Investigators later revealed a plot by Young-Jenkins and two other men to rob Weston of money and/ or marijuana, according to police. The trio drove to the area of Weston’s residence that morning and one of the males who allegedly knew the victim knocked on his door.
Weston allowed the man in and the two began speaking, according to police. The man then left the house, but re-entered seconds later with Young-Jenkins while the third man remained in the car.
Police said Young-Jenkins raised a silver, long-barreled revolver and immediately shot Weston with his girlfriend and infant daughter just feet away.
The two men fled the house and a surveillance camera captured Young-Jenkins fumbling with something in the waistband area of his pants with both hands.
Young-Jenkins and the other man then jumped into a Mercedes Benz that was being operated by the third man and fled the area. No other arrests in the case have been announced.
“I go to sleep and I wake up and think about everything, detail for detail, every single day,” the girlfriend told Common Pleas Court Judge Kevin F. Kelly Tuesday. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”
She said their daughter is now 7 years old and has had to grow up without a father. She described Weston as the glue that held everything together and said it has not been the same since he has been gone.
“You took half of me,” the girlfriend said. “You took from my child. You snatched him from a family who loved him unconditionally. We can never get this man back.”
“It’s been five long years and I’m still enduring this pain of losing my only brother,” said the victim’s sibling. “That was my heart. That was my everything. I hope you sit and you pray and you think about everything, because you get to come back. He is never coming back.”
Young-Jenkins did not comment during the hearing.
In addition to prison time, he was ordered to provide a DNA sample to state police and to have no contact with the victim’s family.
Young-Jenkins is not eligible for early release, but was given credit for time served back to his arrest date of Oct. 4, 2019.