Staring intently at the four men who beat Iraq War veteran Zach Gamble to death, Gamble’s mother, Tina Robbins, described the last two weeks of his life.
"As each day passed his condition worsened," she said amid sobs. "The ventilator caused him to constantly gag. His heart would start racing, his breathing would become rapid."
She was there at the end. “There are no words to describe watching your son die before your eyes,” she said.
The four pleaded guilty Wednesday to voluntary manslaughter and aggravated battery for the March 2012 attack. Tarell Winston Secrest, 37, who had known Gamble since middle school, and three co-defendants: Sean Dgen Hall, 40, of Mableton; Jason Scott Hill, 36, of Woodstock; and Arthur Lynell Batchelor, 38, of Acworth were each sentenced to 20 years in prison and 10 years probation.
Robbins said she gave her “reluctant blessing” to the plea agreement; “How can there ever be restitution for this?” she said.
For nearly two hours, Gamble’s family and friends told a packed Cobb County courtroom how the 34-year-old former Marine’s loss had devastated them. The emotional testimony brought Secrest to tears and at least two of his co-defendants were also visibly moved.
When the decision was made to take Gamble off life support, Robbins recalled “a loud echoing gurgle rattle in my ears. I looked up and (saw) the color in Zach’s face leave.”
“You killed a part of my little boy,” said Marley Miller, Gamble’s ex-wife and the mother of his 8-year-old son. “You stripped Luke of his innocence. You took the light out of his sweet little eyes.”
She described how Luke stood by his father’s side as long as he could.
At Gamble’s funeral, Luke “held his (father’s) hand, saluted him and watched as his casket was lowered,” Miller said. “He didn’t want to miss a second of seeing his daddy one last time.”
The assault on Gamble, which took place in the parking lot of a Cobb apartment complex where Secrest was celebrating his birthday, was “severe, brutal and ultimately lethal,” said prosecutor Michael Carlson.
According to testimony from a Cobb police detective at a pre-trial hearing last year, Gamble had been asked to leave after he began discussing atrocities he had seen during two tours as a squad leader in Iraq.
Witnesses said Gamble, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, loitered in the parking lot and sent an unprintable three-word text message to his friend. Secrest and the other three went outside to confront him, and a fight ensued. Gamble, outmatched, fell to his knees and was punched and kicked repeatedly as he lay on the ground. He was discovered about 40 minutes later, just before sunrise, by a taxi driver who had accidentally run over his leg.
“Instead of being sensitive and allowing him to speak about the devil on his back, you four cowards kicked him so hard his brain shifted,” the victim’s sister, Nikki Gamble, told the defendants.
Malice murder charges against each of the suspects were dropped due to questions about legal provocation, the degree of culpability of each defendant and the lack of eyewitness testimony, Carlson said.
“We wanted to hold each one of these defendants equally culpable,” Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds said after the sentencing.
The case attracted national attention, leading some observers to suggest race played a role in Gamble's death. The victim was white and all of his assailants are African-American.
Family members were quick to reject such speculation.
“We are not a prejudiced family,” said Gamble’s aunt, Crystal Chance. “Zach was not a prejudiced person.”
He was, above all else, a devoted father, said those who knew him best.
“I’ve had so many good times with him and now I can’t see him anymore,” said his only child, Luke, whose audio testimony was recorded and played near the end of the hearing. “I miss him so much.”
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