Maximum sentence in sharpshooter murder

Jose E. Ramos to serve 60 years in 2008 slaying of Tynel Hardwick

Judge Arthur C. Hadden sentenced Jose E. Ramos Friday to 60 years in prison for the Oct. 10, 2008, murder of Tynel Hardwick in Norwich, saying the maximum punishment was the only appropriate sentence for the extraordinarily senseless and barbaric crime.

Hardwick’s family members, who had come from the Hartford area by bus, waited patiently for court to open and listened to a lengthy and profane rant from the 33-year-old Ramos about the injustice of his plight.

Ramos applauded when the judge handed down the sentence.

A 12-member jury had found Ramos guilty during a trial February in Superior Court in Norwich. During his sentencing hearing in the same courtroom Friday, Ramos attacked the judge, prosecutors, his attorney and the media during his diatribe and was still yelling as judicial marshals led him out of the courtroom. Judge Hadden told Ramos he could be held in contempt of court for his behavior.

Bus driver Sheila Harris, the victim’s mother, had stood up shakily and sobbed as she delivered a brief victim impact statement. During Ramos’ trial in February, she had been unable to stay in the courtroom because she found the testimony too painful.

“Mr. Ramos. Jose,” she said. “I’m not crying because of you. I’m crying because of me. I’m broken. You took my baby. My life has not been the same since 10/10/08.”

Hardwick’s uncle pointed at Ramos and said he wanted to know why he had shot the boy he had watched grow up.

“You took his life,” Van Harris said. “For what? I want to know for what. I

hope you never get out. I hope you die in prison.”

Hardwick, 29, had been fatally shot in the head as he stood outside Rumors Bar & Grill on Boswell Avenue smoking a cigarette. He had a young daughter and large, close-knit family and circle of friends.

Testimony at the trial indicated that after a small tiff inside the bar, Ramos left and retrieved a rifle he kept at his sister’s home in Norwich. He laid in wait in a grassy lot 143 feet from the front door of the bar and killed Ramos with a single gunshot to the head.

Ramos had provided a written confession to police after he was arrested in Queens, N.Y., four years later and wrote a letter of apology to the victim’s mother.

At the trial, Ramos’ best friend Dishon Morgan had testified he was with Ramos when Ramos carried out the shooting. Ramos’ sister, Shavonna Kincade, also implicated him at his trial, though Ramos now claims his sister was high on drugs when she took the witness stand. Kincade had testified that she was told her brother killed a man following a dispute about somebody getting spit on “because of someone not saying hello to someone else.”

Prosecutor Lawrence J. Tytla, who had tried the case with Thomas M. DeLillo, said that even as murder cases go, this one was particularly irrational and unwarranted.

“In 34 years, this is the only sharpshooter murder I’ve ever seen,” Tytla said. As a previously convicted felon, he said, Ramos should not have had a gun. Judicial Branch records indicate Ramos was convicted in 2006 of threatening, possession of narcotics and failure to appear in court.

The prosecutor said Ramos had a childhood “that I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” and that if the act he committed was less egregious, that might be taken into account. Ramos’ sister had testified that she and her brother were adopted as young children into separate families in Norwich.

Defense attorney Bruce McIntyre, who had revealed during the trial that Ramos suffers from mental illness, said that some of his client’s disabilities are treated with medication, but others are not amenable to drugs. In a mental health evaluation of Ramos, psychologist Marshall Gladstone wrote that Ramos was “somebody who took offense easily, often when no offense was intended, and reacted irrationally to it,” according to testimony.

Hadden called Ramos’ claims about the unjust sys- tem “nonsense” and said his version of the facts were “nothing less than fantasy.” Hadden said he had rarely seen as much overwhelming evidence in a case. He said oftentimes murders are committed “in the heat of anger” by someone who loses control.

“The defendant had plenty of time to think about what he was doing and stop what he was doing,” Hadden said. “He chose to retrieve a weapon. He chose to return to the scene and kill a person he didn’t even know.”

The victim’s mother, pleased with the sentence though it won’t bring back her only son, hugged many of the people involved in the case before leaving with her family and friends.

“Sixty years!” she and others exclaimed after leaving the courtroom.