3 sentenced to life without parole in drive-by that left girl, 8, dead

The hail of bullets was fired in an instant.

The three young men responsible will pay for it over a lifetime.

As she was bound by law to do, a Pinellas Circuit judge on Wednesday sentenced the trio to life without parole for the shooting that left an 8-year-old girl dead. Each of the three men is 21.

The girl, Paris Whitehead-Hamilton, died instantly the morning of April 5, 2009, her heart pierced by one of the more than 50 bullets fired into her home.

To Shenita Williams, the girl's aunt and caretaker, the suspects' lives are over now, too.

"Their life ended today," Williams said outside the courtroom after a jury found Dondre Davis, Stephen Harper and Duong Nguyen guilty of first-degree murder. "It was justice, but no victory."

None of the three made a statement before the judge and the men showed little reaction to the verdict. Davis' mother, Sabrina, began to cry and was escorted out of the courtroom by family members.

Another associate of the defendants had to be escorted out of the building after he yelled out an expletive to Pinellas Circuit Judge Nancy Moate Ley as he walked out.

"I just want the defendants to know, we have forgiven you all," LaShawn Crawford, Paris' cousin and a spokeswoman for the family, told the three in court. "Use this time to think about what transpired. It's not cool to take somebody's life and to take somebody's child from them."

Outside court, Crawford said prosecutors entertained seeking the death penalty but opted not to do so. At no point was the girl's family interested in death as a punishment.

"The verdict we feel is just, but at the same time we did not agree to take a life for a life," Crawford told the three while speaking in court.

On that April morning, the three pulled up in a car to 771 Preston Ave. S. in south St. Petersburg. The three were members of a gang called the Bethel Heights Boys, and they wanted to kill a member of a rival gang, who they believed was inside.

Davis and Nguyen got out of the red Ford Focus armed with AR-15 assault rifles and fired 56 times at the house. Sleeping on a front porch that had been converted into a bedroom was Paris.

She tried escaping toward the back of the house, but a bullet pierced her chest. None of the other people in the house was struck.

Harper remained inside the car, but prosecutors say he was part of the plan to kill the rival gang member, and the jury agreed. Driving the car was Mario Walls, who pleaded to second-degree murder in December in exchange for testimony against the three. He will be sentenced next month.

The shooting rocked the city, with many using it as a springboard for a dialogue on street violence in St. Petersburg. Speaking to the defendants in court, community activist Momma Tee Lassiter told them they should let "their homies" know there should be peace on the streets this weekend, and no retaliation, even though they themselves are on their way to prison.

The defense attorneys for the three said they will appeal. The attorneys for Davis and Nguyen said their clients should have been charged with second-degree murder, not first-degree murder, because there was no premeditation. Harper's attorney said he is appealing on the grounds the instructions given to the jury before deliberations were flawed.