Man gets 5 years for fatal ’11 shooting

Lucas County Common Pleas Court Judge Myron Duhart doesn’t understand how incidents of violence and gun play have become so common, he told a man convicted of fatally shooting his friend.

“That’s what guns are designed to do, is take life,” Duhart told Eric Johnson, who killed Quidare Buffaloe in a South Toledo apartment parking lot in August 2011. “You don’t play with a gun. You thought he was playing. You don’t play with a gun. It’s designed to kill.”

On Tuesday, Johnson entered an Alford plea — not admitting guilt — to a lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter with a gun specification and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Additional charges of murder, felonious assault, improperly discharging a firearm into a habitation, and having weapons while under disability, were dismissed.

Johnson apologized to Buffaloe’s family.

“I’m really sorry. He really was my friend,” Johnson said.

Benjamin Logan Local School Superintendent David Harmon said that the boy was supposed to help young students get off the bus at the correct stop.

“There were indicators from the sheriff that the perpetrator may have done things with other students on the bus,” Harmon said. 25 years.

The plea came the morning Liang was set to begin trial for aggravated murder and seven other counts.