More than four years after a fistfight in the parking lot of Randallstown High School sparked gunfire that wounded four students, the man who provided the gun to the shooters looked at the most severely injured victim in a Baltimore County courtroom yesterday and said he was sorry.
"I want to apologize for your life, and how you have to live your life from now on," Antonio R. Jackson told William "Tippa" Thomas III, who was paralyzed from the waist down when bullets pierced his neck, back and lung four years ago. "I'm truly sorry. All of that stuff wasn't meant to happen."
Jackson, 25, of Owings Mills had pleaded guilty minutes before to one count of first-degree assault and one count of using a handgun in commission of a crime of violence. He was sentenced by Circuit Judge Patrick Cavanaugh to concurrent sentences of 10 years for the assault charge and five years for the handgun charge. The handgun charge comes without the possibility of parole.
The case against Jackson was delayed for several years after prosecutors dropped the charges against him because they could not find a key witness. When the witness was located last year, the charges were refiled.
Prosecutor Karen Pilarski said Jackson provided the gun to the two men convicted of shooting into the crowd of high school students May 7, 2004, and then drove one of the gunmen away.
Also shot were students Alexander Brown, Marcus McLain and Andre Mellerson. They were not in court yesterday.
Thomas, who sat in a wheelchair in the back of the courtroom, and his mother, Peggie Henderson, said Jackson's apology seemed heartfelt. It surprised them, they said, because the other defendants found guilty in the shootings hadn't apologized directly to Thomas. Tyrone Devon Brown was sentenced in 2004 to 50 years in prison for attempted second-degree murder and a handgun charge, and Matthew Timothy McCullough was sentenced in 2005 to 100 years in prison for four counts of first-degree assault.
"It was in good taste for him to apologize," Thomas said of Jackson. "Based on his apology, I really feel as though he didn't totally know what he was walking into. He had an idea, but he probably didn't know how it would escalate. He was the only one who looked me in the eye."
Jackson "showed more remorse than any of them," Henderson said.
