Erie 17-year-old gets county prison for shooting teen on basketball court

The shooting of a 17-year-old at an Erie outdoor basketball court in September came at the end of a long summer of youth violence and spurred calls for a stop to juveniles firing guns.

For those charged in the case, the legal ramifications of the shooting have started to become clearer.

The first defendant to be sentenced in the case, a 17-year-old boy who admitted firing the gun, was ordered incarcerated at the Erie County Prison for 11½ to 23 months.

The sentence, imposed Tuesday, is in the mitigated range of the state sentencing guidelines, and signaled that the Erie County District Attorney's Office is also focused on another defendant, a then 16-year-old boy who prosecutors accused of giving the shooter the gun.

The District Attorney's Office and the defense jointly recommended the sentence of 11½ to 23 months for the shooter, Nysear L. Buckner. He was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty in April to one count of aggravated assault, a first-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in state prison.

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A sentence in the standard range for Buckner would have likely been at least five years in state prison, said Buckner's court-appointed lawyer, Keith Clelland.

The sentence of no more than 23 months spared Buckner state prison, where the sentences must be at least two years. Erie County Judge John J. Mead, who sentenced Buckner, also ordered him to serve five years of probation and 200 hours of community service, and he gave Buckner credit for the approximately eight months he had served in prison since his arrest.

"I cannot think of a more frightening development in the community than the increase in youth shootings," Mead told Buckner.

Clelland said he and the prosecution agreed on the mitigated-range sentence due to Buckner's lack of a prior record and his cooperation in telling police that he fired the gun at the victim, also 17. The victim was hit in the buttocks and recovered after emergency surgery at UPMC Hamot. No statement from the victim was read in court.

Clelland vouched for Buckner.

"My client had never been in trouble before," Clelland said.

Violence on courts

The shooting occurred shortly after 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 29 as the victim was playing basketball at the Eagle's Nest courts in the 1100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, just north of East 12th Street. Eagle's Nest is part of the Victory Christian Center complex, whose leader, Bishop Dwane Brock, has been outspoken in calling for an end to youth violence.

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The violence has continued to plague Erie and includes the April 5 shooting at Erie High School and the fatal shooting nine days later of 7-year-old Antonio "Espn" Yarger, struck while he was walking with friends in his Downing Avenue neighborhood. Officials have blamed the surge on youth violence on gangs they said formed during the pandemic, when many students lacked the structure of in-school instruction when they were forced to take remote classes.

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Though Buckner benefited from a recommended sentence, one of his co-defendants, Jerico D. Beason, will not get the same consideration, said Assistant District Attorney Emily Downing, who is handling the shooting case but was not in court for the sentencing.

Downing said the prosecution agreed to the sentencing deal with Buckner because of his lack of a prior record and his admission that he fired the gun, but she said no recommended sentence is in place for Beason, who is accused of giving the gun to Buckner. Beason, who turned 17 in March, was also charged as an adult.

Beason pleaded no contest in April to aggravated assault as a first-degree felony and is to be sentenced June 27, according to court records. He is at the Erie County Prison.

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Unlike Buckner, Beason has a prior record. When Erie police arrested him in the shooting on the basketball court, he was free on bond in a case in which he was charged with wounding a 14-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy in a shooting in the 1100 block of West 11th Street on April 27, 2021. The prosecution had his bond revoked in that case, Downing said in an interview.

As for the shooting on the basketball court, those involved "definitely had an intended target, but that is not who they hit," Downing said.

The third person charged in the shooting is Evaunna I. Lasanta, who turned 24 in November. She pleaded guilty in March to a first-degree felony count of criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and is to be sentenced on June 16, according to court records. Lasanta is at the Erie County Prison.

Defendant, mother apologize

Erie police charged Lasanta, Beason and Buckner quickly after the shooting. Police said they learned from witnesses and surveillance video that the suspects fled in a Jeep SUV that a woman was driving.

Investigators said that about 40 minutes after the shooting, officers saw a vehicle matching the description and stopped it in the 1000 block of East Seventh Street. The three occupants of the vehicle — Lasanta, Beason and Buckner — were detained, and officers saw in plain view a black handgun under the front passenger seat, police said.

By then, the basketball courts on Pennsylvania Avenue — a place meant to foster friendship and fun — had been cleared of activity due to the shooting. Violence had not broken out on the courts before, Bishop Brock said after the Sept. 29 shooting.

Brock at the time urged parents need to check their children's bookbags, mattresses and drawers, because "these guns are coming from somewhere, and parents need to join the fight to keep the guns out of the hands of these children."

On Tuesday, in court, Assistant District Molly Anglin, who handled the sentencing, told Mead, "The facts are hard to ignore in this case."

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Buckner, wearing a green prison uniform, apologized in court.

"I am extremely sorry for my actions," he said.

Buckner's mother, Shawnta Buckner, also apologized to Mead. She pledged that her son would not return to court as she acknowledged the ongoing youth violence in Erie.

"We are in a hard time right now, with these young children," Shawnta Buckner said.

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie youth violence: Teen sentenced for shooting on basketball court