CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The mother of a Charleston murder victim says she is still haunted by the memories of her son being shot on the city’s West Side back in October 2015.
“I think about my son laying out there being shot in the back, left alone. I think about it every night,” said Lillian Jarrett, the mother of 24 year old Dominic Clark.
Jarrett spoke in Kanawha County Circuit Court Thursday before Judge Tod Kaufman sentenced her son’s killer, Darius Coles, to 10 years in prison.
Coles, 20, previously pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. Jarrett said Coles should have received the maximum sentence of 15 years.
“This boy gets nothing. This is nothing,” she told reporters after the hearing.
The shooting happened in an alley on Ohio Avenue. Clark was shot multiple times, according to Kanawha County Assistant Prosecutor J.C. MacCallum.
“The victim, Dominic Clark, was shot four times — twice in the lower back, once in the chest, once in the neck/back area,” MacCallum told the judge.
Clark was leaving to go home when he was shot, MacCallum said.
“He wasn’t in the middle of a heated argument. He didn’t pull a gun on someone or anything of that nature. He was walking to the cab to leave and he got shot in the back,” he said.
Jarrett said it’s unclear how the two men knew each other, but she thought they were friends.
“Apparently they were supposed to be friends, so I don’t understand. I’m just left with nothing because I don’t know what happened,” she said.
Prosecutors argued for the maximum prison time. The defense requested a lesser sentence because Coles was only 18 at the time of the shooting.
Jarrett said her son leaves behind his 5 year old daughter.
“How am I going to keep his memory alive for his daughter? She’ll never know her father,” she said, fighting back tears.
Coles did not address the court or victim’s family at Thursday’s sentencing.