Drug sellers sentenced to 20, 22 years

If William L. Walker Jr. has any information about a gang-related shooting that paralyzed an innocent passer-by seven years ago on the Near East Side, he isn’t giving it up.

Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Daniel Hogan encouraged a judge on Thursday to consider that lack of cooperation when sentencing Walker, 26, for his involvement in manufacturing and selling crack cocaine.

Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell declined,

but still sentenced Walker to 20 years in prison, and 27-year-old co-defendant Alvin C. Dent Jr. to 22 years. Their lawyers had asked the judge to impose sentences of 11 and 12 years, respectively.

But had Walker, 26, been willing to take a polygraph test to see whether he knew anything about the shooting that left Alexandria “Alix” Reese a quadriplegic, prosecutors said they would have offered him a plea deal in the drug case.

One of Walker’s accomplices in the drug case, Drakkar Groce, 26, is charged in the shooting.

Walker’s unwillingness to assist in the shooting investigation “should factor into whatever sentence the court imposes,” Hogan told O’Donnell.

However, the judge agreed with defense attorney Kort Gatterdam that it would be inappropriate to base Walker’s sentence on his lack of cooperation in an

unrelated case.

“Mr. Walker was never charged with having anything to do with that,” Gatterdam argued.

Like Walker, Dent wouldn’t cooperate with prosecutors in the shooting case. Dent was sentenced at a separate hearing, where Hogan didn’t mention the shooting because the judge had already declined to consider it when sentencing Walker.

A jury in May convicted Walker, Dent and Groce of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, an organized-crime charge, and multiple counts of manufacturing, possessing and trafficking in cocaine. Dent and Groce also were convicted of gun specifications.

The jurors saw video footage from the group’s own surveillance cameras inside a duplex in the 1600 block of Greenway Avenue on the Near East Side, which showed the defendants cooking, processing, packaging and selling crack cocaine.

Groce hasn’t been

sentenced in the drug case because he is one of two men who are awaiting trial for felonious assault in the shooting that paralyzed Reese.

The victim was driving through the intersection of Atcheson and Trevitt streets as gunfire broke out on the night of May 27, 2010. Reese, 25 at the time, had been driving a friend home and they’d gotten lost.

Her friend escaped injury, but a bullet struck Reese in the neck, paralyzing her. She has some sensation, but no motor control below her neck.

The case went unsolved until last year, when Groce and William R. Griffin, 26, were charged with the shooting, based on a witness.

Police think Reese’s vehicle was caught in the crossfire as rival gang members shot at each other from opposite sides of the street.

Groce and Griffin are scheduled for trial Aug. 7. BIRTHS This list is compiled from voluntary submissions by parents to hospitals.

LICKING MEMORIAL HOSPITAL (NEWARK)

Dorothy and Scott: girl, July 15 Amanda/ boy, July 17 Kelsey and Patrick: girl, July 17 July 16 July 18 July 17 17 July 18 19

Korey:

Stacy and Zachary: boy,

OHIOHEALTH RIVERSIDE METHODIST HOSPITAL Ashley/ girl, July 18 Bronwyn and Joshua: boy, Jose:

Karen and Stephen: boy, Judith and Rick: boy, July Katrina and Cleefton: boy, Alexus and Brent: girl, July 19 Kerri and Billy: boy, July 18 Brandy and David: girl, July

Melissa and Cory: boy, 18 18 Nicole and Oscar: girl, July 17 Nadeana and Steven: girl, July 18 Ashlee and Eric: girl, July 19 1-7 p.m. Jenny and Derek: girl, July 18

Ronda and Emerson: girl, July 17

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