Teen South Carolina school shooter gets life for killing 1st grader.
COLUMBIA, S.C. » A school shooter who was 14 when he killed a first grader on a school playground in South Carolina after killing his father in their home was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole.
Jesse Osborne targeted Townvi l le Elementary School because he had spent seven years there. Prosecutors, who pushed for the life sentence, said the teen was familiar with the classroom layout and knew there was no police officer on campus.
Osborne crashed his father’s pickup truck into the fence on Sept. 28, 2016, and fired on first graders celebrating a classmate’s birthday. Uneaten cupcakes with the Batman logo were still seen inside police tape hours later.
But Osborne’s lawyers noted he never tried to get inside the school, even though police took 12 minutes to arrive. Osborne had left a video chat open on his cellphone and witnesses said Osborne was pacing outside, crying and saying he was sorry.
Judge Lawton McIntosh handed down the life sentence in Anderson County immediately following several recommendations he mete out the maximum punishment possible. Those seeking life included Osborne’s former principal at Townville, the teacher whose class was on the playground that day, the family of 6-year- old Jacob Hall who was killed, Osborne’s own uncle and a child who escaped the horror. A U. S. Supreme Court decision bans the death penalty for juveniles.
“He killed my second best friend and showed up on my number one BFF’s birthday. I feel very, very, very mad. That is three reasons why he should spend life in prison,” the unnamed child wrote in a letter to the judge.
Osborne was sentenced hours after the latest deadly United States school shooting. Authorities said a student gunman opened fire at Saugus High School in Southern California, killing two students, wounding three others and shooting himself in the head. Investigators haven’t said why the teen attacked his classmates on his 16th birthday.
Osborne, now 17, was being tried as an adult and faced a minimum of 30 years after pleading guilty to two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. This week’s special hearing was required under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that life sentences for juveniles can’t be mandatory and arbitrary.
McIntosh said the murders were heinous and he worried about Osborne’s lack of remorse.