A Bloods gang member was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences Tuesday in the DeKalb County murders of two people despite his lawyer’s pleas for leniency because the gang had been his “family” since age 12.
Superior Court Judge Gail Flake declined to give 19-year-old Kemontay Cullins the single life term requested in the 2014 deaths of Alexis Malone, 17, and Michael Phillips, 29, according to Channel 2 Action News.
The sentence, however, did not assuage the mothers of the victims.
“Do you know how much pain it has caused me not to have my child - my baby? Do you care?,” Tennille Howard, Malone’s mother, asked Cullins at the sentencing. “I will never see her again. Why? Why did you do it?”
The killing has its roots in a fight that grew out of a boxing match party near Stone Mountain last year, and Cullins was one of four Bloods members tied to the case, investigators said. Three others entered guilty pleas in the case involving two homicides, including Oslushla Smith, whom Flake sentenced to life plus 40 years in May.
Malone had gotten into a fight with another woman at an apartment complex on May 3, 2014, at a party to watch a Floyd Mayweather Jr. boxing championship match. During the fight, Smith and other Bloods members killed Phillips, investigators said.
Days after the Phillips’ killing, Smith became concerned that Malone might tell police that she saw him shoot Phillips, investigators said. Bloods members were accused of luring Malone to her death by driving her to a park where Cullins and his cohorts shot her several times and hit her in the face with a brick, according to charges read out in magistrate court.
Phillips’ mother was also in court, Channel 2 reported, and addressed Cullins.
“I forgive you, because you don’t have to answer to me,” Elizabeth Phillips said. “You’re going to have to answer to God for what you did.”
Another person charged in the case, Kayla Dixon, entered into a plea bargain for voluntary manslaughter and gang charges, said Erik Burton, spokesman for the district attorney’s office. Another defendant, Cutrez Johnson, who was 16 at the time of the killings, pleaded guilty to reduced charges previously and was sentenced to serve 15 years of a 20-year sentence, Burton said.
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