Man gets 14 years for slaying over parking space

TOLEDO — It began with an argument over a parking space, and, two months later, Philando Hudson ended it with six gunshots that killed Effram Smith Jr.

Hudson, 24, of the 4000 block of Wetzler Road, was sentenced Wednesday by Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Myron Duhart to an agreed-upon term of 14 years in prison.

Smith, 26, of Toledo, was shot Jan. 2 inside a car when Hudson pulled up alongside him at Berdan Avenue and Jeep Parkway and fired six times. Smith died Jan. 18.

“Essentially, at the end of the day, when you peel it down, it is about nothing,” Duhart told Hudson. “When it gets that bad on the street and in society where someone you feel disrespected you or you feel slighted, there’s no other option except taking someone’s life, that’s pathetic, pitiful.”

Hudson had been charged with aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault and discharge of a firearm over a public road, but he entered an Alford plea — pleading guilty but not admitting guilt — to an amended charge of involuntary manslaughter and discharge of a firearm over a road, both with firearm specifications.

Matthew Simko, an assistant county prosecutor, told the court at the time of Hudson’s plea on July 19 that an eyewitness — the woman who was driving the car for Smith — died of unrelated causes after Hudson’s indictment.

Simko credited Toledo police detective Robert Schroeder with keeping the case alive by developing other witnesses.

Smith’s mother, Ann Kelley, told the court in a statement read by victim’s advocate Vera Sanders that she could not understand why Hudson would shoot her son over a parking spot.

“My son, E.Z., didn’t deserve to be hunted down like an animal and then shot in front of his 10-year-old stepdaughter and girlfriend,” she said. “Knowing they were in the car, he was just heartless.” Duhart agreed. “I’m troubled by the fact that someone’s life was taken, and I understand things happen in the street,” he said. “I get that, but this was in front of loved ones. So you have affected and will affect lives for generations.”

CRIME & THE COURTS /