A Gwinnett County judge sentenced the man responsible for killing a Creekland Middle School student with a stray bullet to 20 years Thursday.
Superior Court Judge Stephen Boswell sentenced Joshua Simpson Banks to the maximum penalty after the court heard emotional testimony from the mother, father, friends and football coach of 13-year-old Tre Shambry, according to prosecutor Karen Harris.
Harris said Banks must serve 17 years in prison. "He will receive credit for the time he has already served on the charges related to this case," she said after the sentencing. "After the 17 years, he will be released onto probation for three years, until his sentence expires."
Banks, who fired multiple shots at Tre's apartment building the night he was killed Jan. 18, 2010, sought leniency, Harris said. He told the court the incident was an accident and that he cooperated with police during the investigation.
Harris, however, said Banks “lied to police multiple times in video interviews by denying that he ever possessed a gun that day and claiming that another man was the shooter, before finally confessing.” He wasn’t arrested until eight months after the incident.
Banks, 27, escaped a felony murder conviction and a possible life sentence two weeks ago after a jury instead convicted him on lesser charges of involuntary manslaughter and weapons possession by a felon.
Harris called the jury’s decision a “compromise” verdict.
“We were disappointed,” Harris said of the jury's verdict. “We believe it was a felony murder case."
Tre was climbing into his bunk bed at the Holland Park Apartments when Banks, drunk and standing outside with a gun, began firing at the building, according to testimony at his trial. A bullet struck Tre in the abdomen.
The child’s death was Gwinnett County’s first homicide of 2010.
Although he was a student at Creekland in Lawrenceville, Tre hoped to play wide receiver for the Collins Hill High School Eagles and worked out with the school’s freshman team. He was so serious about football that he watched videos of NFL receivers, studying their technique, his mother said in an earlier interview.
Tre was an honors student at McClure Middle School in Paulding County before Tijuana Shambry moved to the Holland Park Apartments in Lawrenceville with her son and daughters. She said she was told by a friend that it was safe and in a good school district.
Shambry said she found her son mortally wounded and groaning, and his two sisters screaming the night of the shooting. Tre died later at Gwinnett Medical Center.
The family moved from the complex soon after the shooting, according to the prosecutor.
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