Man gets 60 years for killing girl; mom says he’ll go to ‘hell’
The reputed gang member convicted in the 2012 murder of 7-year-old Heaven Sutton was sentenced to 60 years in prison Thursday.
Before Cook County Judge Ursula Walowski sentenced Jerrell Dorsey, Heaven’s mother — wearing a fuzzy sweater in her daughter’s favorite color, pink — told Dorsey he was going to “hell.”
Ashake Banks said her family still was pained by the bubbly second grader’s death seven years after she was struck by a bullet in a gang shooting in front of their Austin home.
Raising her gaze to Dorsey, who sat slouched in his tan jail jumpsuit beside his lawyer, Banks said, “You all lied and laughed on me for years. . . . You all took my baby, and she was scared to die. Don’t say you’re sorry or remorseful . . . . You’re going to hell.”
Dorsey was found guilty by a jury in April of first-degree murder, aggravated battery of a firearm and aggravated discharge.
Speaking softly to the judge Thursday, Dorsey maintained his innocence.
“My heart [goes] out to the family, but I’m innocent,” Dorsey told Walowski. “I didn’t do this.”
Dorsey was one of two gunmen who opened fire on rival gang members on a hot June night, striking Heaven, who had been selling candy and snow cones at a makeshift concession stand her mother ran on the sidewalk, prosecutors said.
The other gunman had been shot by members of the Insane Mafia Vice Lords weeks earlier. So Dorsey and the other man — members of the Four Corner Hustlers — were looking for rivals when they opened fire in the 1700 block of North Luna Street, prosecutors said.
The two gunmen had been targeting a man named Antwan Monroe and his brother, Marquis, and managed to shoot Marquis Monroe in the leg.
Walowski gave Dorsey a 50-year sentence for Heaven’s murder and a consecutive 10year sentence for wounding Marquis Monroe.
The other alleged gunman was never charged in the girl’s murder.