A Cumming man was allowed Friday to avoid a death-penalty trial because prosecutors wanted to spare his young daughter from having to testify that she saw him kill her mother.
During a highly emotional hearing, Christopher Erdman accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He pleaded guilty to killing his former girlfriend, 25-year-old Shannon Lawrence, of Canton, on June 5, 2011, in a Wells Fargo bank parking lot in Milton.
Fulton County prosecutor Sheila Ross said Erdman fired one shot into Lawrence’s pelvis, another that penetrated one of her lungs and two more shots into the back of her head as she lay face down on the pavement. Their two children, an 11-month-old son and 2-year-old daughter, were there when the murder occurred.
Lawrence had previously taken out a restraining order against Erdman because he had stalked and harassed her. When they exchanged children, that was supposed to be supervised. But it wasn’t this time, when Lawrence drove to meet Erdman in Milton, Ross said.
Lawrence’s father, mother and stepmother read aloud letters about their loss and the effect the killing has had on the two children, particularly Lawrence’s daughter.
“These children will forever suffer the consequences of this senseless, shocking murder,” Lawrence’s father, Randy Lawrence, told Fulton Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter.
Shannon Lawrence’s daughter, who is now five, continues to have nightmares about the incident and says she did not want her mother to die. “She’ll never forget seeing, as she said to me, mommy lying on the ground with blood coming out of her ears,” said Randy Lawrence, his voice quavering.
“Shannon wanted nothing more than to love and be loved,” her weeping mother, Diana Macksey, said. “Our entire family will never be the same.”
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