The reputed gang member convicted in the 2012 murder of 7-year-old Heaven Sutton was sentenced to 60 years in prison Thursday.
Before Cook County Judge Ursula Walowski sentenced Jerrell Dorsey, Heaven’s mother — wearing a fuzzy sweater in her daughter’s favorite color pink — told Dorsey he was going to “hell.”
Ashake Banks said her family still was pained by the bubbly second-grader’s death seven years after she was struck by a bullet in a gang shooting in front of their Austin home.
Raising her gaze to Dorsey, who sat slouched in his tan jail jumpsuit beside his lawyer, Banks said, “You all lied and laughed on me for years....You all took my baby, and she was scared to die. Don’t say you’re sorry or remorseful....You’re going to hell.”
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Dorsey was found guilty by a jury in April of first-degree murder, aggravated battery of a firearm and aggravated discharge.
Speaking softly to the judge Thursday, Dorsey maintained his innocence.
“My heart go out to the family, but I’m innocent,” Dorsey told Walowski. “I didn’t do this.”
Dorsey was one of two gunmen who opened fire on rival gang members on a hot June night, striking Heaven, who had been selling candy and snow cones at a makeshift concession stand her mother ran on the sidewalk.
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Prosecutors said that Dorsey and Lance Sims were members of the Four Corner Hustlers and were looking for their rivals in the Insane Mafia Vice Lords, who had shot at and wounded Sims weeks earlier.
The two gunmen had been targeting a man named Antwan Monroe and his brother, Marquis, and also managed to shoot Marquis Monroe in the leg as they opened fire on bystanders in the 1700 block of North Luna Street, prosecutors said.
Walowski gave Dorsey a 50-year sentence for Heaven’s murder, and a consecutive 10-year sentence for wounding Marquis Monroe.
