Gunman gets 30 years to life in slaying

Despite a Franklin County jury having convicted him of killing one person and wounding another in a 2017 shooting, David J. Echols maintains his innocence.

And that has prevented Patricia Wafer, whose son died in the shooting, from granting him forgiveness.

“How can I forgive you if you won’t take accountabilityfor what you’ve done?” she asked Wednesday as Echols was about to be sentenced for the murder of 19-yearold Damon D. Waddell and the wounding ofwaddell’s then-20-year-old girlfriend, Tyanna West.

“I pray on it every day,” Wafer said. “I want to forgive him, but I can’t ... I ask that he gets everything that he deserves.”

Echols, now 19, apologized in a brief statement in court without admitting to the crime.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” he told Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’donnell. “Unfortunately, for me, I have no knowledge of what happened.”

O’donnell sentenced Echols to life in prison with no chance of parole for 30 years on one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder, along with gun specifications. She could have denied Echols his first chance at parole for as long as 46 years. Echols was 17 when he was accused of shooting the victims on July 9, 2017, as they sat in a car in the 1000 block of Loretta Avenue in North Linden. A county Juvenile Court judge transferred his case to adult court in June 2018.

West was behind the wheel of the car when it was riddled with bullets, and Waddell was in the front passenger seat. A passenger Echols in the back seat escaped injury.

The key witness in the June trial was West, who was shot six times. She testified that Echols was the person who walked up to the car and started shooting, which is also what she had told police immediately after the shooting.

Assistant Franklin County prosecutors Jason Manning and Steve Schott presented evidence that two guns were used in the shooting and at least 16 rounds were fired. No one else has been indicted.