Man admits to 'playing' with gun, fatally shooting 16-year-old girl in Burlington
A Symmes Township man admitted in court on Friday to fatally shooting 16-year-old Scarlett Tucker while mishandling a handgun at a house in Burlington early last year.
Demarkus Hedges, 19, pleaded guilty in Boone County Circuit Court to manslaughter, tampering with evidence and wanton endangerment. His case was set to go to trial on Monday.
As part of a negotiated plea, prosecutors recommended that Hedges serve a total of 20 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after four years. He originally faced a murder charge, which was reduced in exchange for his guilty plea.
In a press release issued shortly after the shooting, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said Hedges shot Tucker in the head after she refused to pick up a bag of marijuana that fell on the bedroom floor.
However, a detective later testified that the shooting and the dropped bag of marijuana were unconnected, though a witness did tell investigators that Hedges pointed the gun at Tucker earlier in the evening when she refused to pick it up, but that’s not when he shot her.
Deputies arrived at the Silver Brook Drive home on Jan. 3, 2023, to find Tucker already dead, the sheriff’s office said.
Tucker, Hedges and three other teens spent much of the previous night and the early morning together in Cincinnati and Covington. They returned to the home in Burlington around 1:30 a.m., according to investigators.
The teens, who witnessed the shooting, told investigators that Hedges brought a handgun into the residence along with marijuana and alcohol. He was mishandling the weapon, taking bullets out of it and loading and unloading the magazine, the detective testified.
Hedges at some point placed the gun against Tucker’s head and pulled the trigger, killing her, prosecutors said in court filings.
“I was playing with the gun, pointed it at Scarlett and it fired accidentally,” Hedges said in court on Friday.
Others were living in the home, including an infant child, when the incident occurred but were sleeping in separate rooms and not involved with or a witness to the shooting.
After the shooting, Hedges said he fled the scene taking the gun with him to keep it from authorities.
He surrendered himself to the U.S. Marshals Service in Covington roughly 12 hours later.
"This was a very unfortunate, tragic, reckless incident. The manslaughter conviction for which Mr. Hedges entered a plea of guilty embodies this type of conduct," Clyde Bennett II, one of Hedges' attorneys, said in a statement. "My hope is that Mr. Hedges takes advantage of his time in prison by rehabilitating himself so that he can be law abiding and productive upon his return to society."
When Boone County investigators searched Hedges’ phone, they found pictures and videos of him owning and displaying firearms, prosecutors said in court filings.
Those images, they added, “show an individual who treats guns as an accessory to a lifestyle devoid of the care or respect for guns a reasonable person would observe.”
Hedges is scheduled to appear before Judge Richard Brueggemann for sentencing on Feb. 23.
Hedges was also charged in Hamilton County in an alleged robbery that happened in South Cumminsville a little over two weeks before Tucker’s killing.
He was part of a group that stole keys, an iPhone and a backpack from a man at gunpoint, according to an affidavit. That case has yet to be resolved.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Man pleads in NKY killing of Scarlett Tucker while 'playing' with gun
