WASHINGTON _ The three men who pleaded guilty to the 2015 killing of 23-year-old Matthew Shlonsky, a former intern for Sen. Rob Portman, were sentenced in D.C. Superior Court on Monday.
Andre Dudley, 22, Marcus King, 22, and Christopher Proctor, 28, each were sentenced for single counts of voluntary manslaughter while armed and two counts each of assault with a dangerous weapon. The sentences carry 18.5 years, 15-20 years and 12-14 years, respectively.
Shlonsky, a 2014 American University graduate, interned Portman, R-Ohio, from January to May in 2013. He was caught in a crossfire in D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood in August 2015. Prosecutors said that Dudley, King and Proctor opened fire on each other, but only Shlonsky was hit. His parents had asked the judge to reject the plea deal that was struck and to sentence the men to longer prison time.
"I realize that no amount of time for these defendants could bring back Mr. Shlonsky. There is nothing I can do at this sentencing that can erase the trauma felt by so many," D.C. Superior Court Judge Juliet McKenna said. She called the shooting that claimed Shlonsky's life as "senseless" and "incredibly reckless and brazen."
"Matt was a talented young man with a bright future who was taken from us too soon," Portman said in a 2015 statement.
Shlonsky was one of two former Capitol Hill interns killed in the summer of 2015. Kevin Sutherland, a 24-year-old American University graduate, was stabbed to death on a Metro train on the Fourth of July the same year. He had worked in the congressional office of Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., as an intern from September to December 2013. Sutherland's killer, Jasper Spires, 21, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in January 2018.
