Shooter of 9-year-old Za’Layia gets 41 years
‘She wanted so much out of life,’ girl’s mother says at sentencing
Za’Layia Jenkins had lofty ambitions.
“I’m going to be famous,” she once told her mother. She did everything a 9-year-old girl would — soccer, dancing, even rapping. But she never lost sight of one of her main goals: going to college.
Those dreams ended May 5, 2016, when a storm of bullets engulfed her aunt’s house in Milwaukee. Za’Layia suffered a fatal head wound.
On Friday, Tony Powell Jr., 25, one of the three men charged in her death, was sentenced to
41 years in prison to be followed by 20 years of supervision.
“She wanted so much out of life,” Destiny Boone, Za’Layia’s mother, told the court Friday.
“I ask that you don’t be lenient with the time that you give him, because Za
’Layia doesn’t have any time left,” she said.
Powell denied any responsibility for Za’Layia’s death.
Otha Jose Brown Jr., 33, and Damonta Jennings, 21, also were charged with first-degree reckless homicide in the girl’s killing. Brown’s case is ongoing, while Jennings was sentenced to 35 years in prison in June.
Powell was previously convicted of cocaine possession in October 2011 and sentenced to probation with six months in jail.
Powell has two other pending cases, both for crimes allegedly committed after the shooting: an armed robbery and first-degree intentional homicide in connection to an Aug. 4 shooting that killed 26-year-old Jerome J. Johnson. Circuit Judge Mark Sanders noted Friday that several members of Powell’s family were in attendance, “which speaks well for your character,” but that Powell’s disregard for the impact his arrest might have on his 4-year-old daughter did not.
“You haven’t lived up to your responsibilities as a
parent,” Sanders said.
Started with a drug deal
Assistant District Attorney Michael Lonski said the sequence of events leading to the shooting began with a suspected drug deal.
Three men seated inside a white Chevrolet Malibu in the area of North 15th Street and West Meinecke Avenue appeared to be selling drugs on the night of May 5, 2016.
They appeared to conduct their deal in front of the house Za’Layia was staying in. People out front witnessed the exchange and asked the men to leave.
After an argument erupted between the men and the residents, the three men departed in their car.
Someone from inside the house fired a shot toward the car as it drove off.
The person who fired that initial gunshot was later convicted of being a felon in possession of a gun, Lonski said.
The white car returned and those inside used two assault rifles and a handgun to convert the house into a “war zone,” Lonski said. More than 40 shots were fired. Police recovered about 16 bullet casings from the assault rifle that Powell is believed to have used, based on a police statement from Brown, one of Powell’s co-defendants.
Za’Layia died two weeks later at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, one day before her 10th birthday.
Sanders said that Powell’s sentence had to send a “very clear message to you and to others” that “when you shoot a gun into a house, and someone dies, there’s an extremely serious consequence.” The hope is, Sanders said, that a would-be shooter decides, “I don’t want to take that risk.”
Sanders, who said he read through 28 pages of letters from Za’Layia’s family, friends and teachers, added that he doesn’t “want to hear from other grade school kids about how much they miss their classmates.”
Boone said she was happy with the sentence.
“He deserves a lot more, obviously. No time is sufficient enough for what he did,” said Boone. “He took my child away. I’m happy he got the time that he got.”
As for Za’Layia: “She’s free now.”