Two more suspects take guilty pleas in shooting

Two more of the five defendants arrested in the shooting death of Daniel Leon in late October 2015 took a plea deal on charges instead of facing trial on Monday.

District Attorney Jack Browning said that Brandon Wilson took a plea deal on a voluntary manslaughter charge and a charge of violations of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act.

Browning explained the charges were downgraded from murder and armed robbery due to the circumstances of what prosecutors believed happened in the case.

Wilson will serve 20 years on the voluntary manslaughter charge, with the possibility of parole.

KVion Ruffin also took a guilty plea in the case on a violation of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, and with time served was released from custody Monday afternoon with the expectation to serve 5 years of probation back in the state of Alabama.

Browning said without Ruffin’s cooperation in the case, police likely wouldn’t have been able to figure out the details of Leon’s death so quickly.

“However he still engaged in criminal acts, and he wasn’t going to get a pass for that,” Browning said.

The case against Wilson boiled down to whether Browning could definitively prove intent in Leon’s shooting death, but that’s not how events played out according to the district attorney.

He said that Leon had never been the target of the five who were looking to ambush another in an armed robbery, but that he got involved and ended up in a struggle with Wilson and was shot amid the fight.

“When we were speaking to Mr. Wilson through his attorney, he was admitting to what we thought happened, which was a botched robbery,” Browning said.

Browning said that the other two suspects in the case, Hennessey Frazier and Thomas Calhoun are expected to be on the trial calendar facing murder, armed robbery and violations of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act later this month.