3 ex-police officers sentenced in death of 8-year-old shot outside football stadium

MEDIA – Three former Sharon Hill police officers were sentenced Friday to five years of probation each with 11 months of house arrest in the shooting death of 8-year-old Fanta Bility outside an Academy Park High School football game on Aug. 27, 2021.

Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge Maragaret Amoroso rendered the sentence of ex-officers Devon Smith, 34; Sean Patrick Dolan, 25; and Brian J. Devaney, 41, who pleaded guilty in November to 10 counts of reckless endangerment in Bility’s death. Manslaughter charges were dismissed under the plea.

They were facing up to two years for each charge, for a total of 20 years, although Bruce Castor, attorney for the Bility family in a civil case had said that was unlikely.

On Aug. 27, 2021, Fanta was leaving an Academy Park football game after she and her family had just watched her sister, Mawatta, cheerlead for the first day of the season. Shots were fired and Fanta and her sister, Mamasu, were hit.

In January 2022, Smith, Devaney and Dolan were fired after a grand jury presentment. They were fired by Sharon Hill Borough Council two days later.

The presentment found that the three had unloaded a collective 25 rounds into the direction of a crowd leaving the football game from its only open exit point in the 800 block of Coates Street. They had been firing at a passing Chevrolet Impala, mistakenly thinking someone inside the car was firing at them.

The grand jury investigation found that the gunshots the three initially heard were from the 900 block of Coates Street, where 18-year-old Hasein Strand, of the 500 block of Felton Street in Collingdale, and Angelo “AJ” Ford, 16, of the first block of High Street in Sharon Hill were firing at each other.

Strand and Ford were originally charged with first degree murder in thecaseunderthetheoryof“transferred intent,”butthosechargesweredropped.

Strand was sentenced to three to six years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated assault and possession of a firearm.

After escaping from the Aspire youth facility for almost over a year, Ford was recaptured in February. Ford faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons offenses.