Fifth teen sentenced in murder case
Cox gets 5 to 7 years for role in shooting during botched robbery.
A 19-year-old Dayton-area man was sentenced on Monday to five to seven years in prison for his role in the incident that resulted in the fatal shooting of a Dayton-area teen in December outside Lebanon.
Dakota Cox, of Washington Twp., Montgomery County, faced 11 to 16½ years, plus one year in prison on a gun specification, before the plea to a bill of information for involuntary manslaughter with an agreed-upon sentence.
Unlike the other four defendants, Cox was charged from the beginning as an adult. He had been in the Warren County Jail on $1 million bond. He gets credit for 252 days in jail while awaiting his day in court.
His is the last of the cases filed, all originally charged as murder but ending in involuntary manslaughter pleas, filed following the fatal shooting of Mason Tru
dics, 18, of Centerville, at a home on Oregonia Road.
In July, Jackson Pelphrey 17, of Centerville; and Jacobs Hicks, 16, of Washington Twp., Montgomery County, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and were sentenced to four years in juvenile detention for their parts in the fatal shooting. Like Pelphrey and Hicks, Cox was leaving the scene when the shooting started, according to his lawyer, Jon Paul Rion.
Pelphrey; Hicks; Kayla Carmack, 17, of Turtlecreek Twp.; Logan Dean, 17, of Washington Twp., Montgomery County; and Cox allegedly plotted to lure the intended victim “for the purposes of tying him up, stripping him of his clothes” and taking him back to his home. There, they planned to rob him and split the proceeds, including money and marijuana, Judge Joe Kirby said in sentencing filings in juvenile court.
At Carmack’s bedroom window, the shooter “heard a noise behind him only to find Trudics coming toward him with a baseball bat.” The intended robbery target fatally wounded Trudics and seriously wounded Dean, who fired two shots “as he was running away,” Kirby said in the filings.
Earlier this month, Carmack was sentenced to 10 to 13½ years in adult prison in connection with her involuntary manslaughter plea.
Last week, Dean pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter with a firearm specification through a bill of information and is to spend at least 11 years and could serve another four years in prison under the plea agreement in the fatal shooting of Trudics, his best friend.
Trudics’ killer, found to be a victim in the case, has not been charged.