'A tragic, tragic situation': Man gets prison for mishandling gun, fatally shooting 16-year-old girl
More than a year after 16-year-old Scarlett Tucker was shot and killed while with a group of teens at a home in Burlington, the man responsible was given a decades-long sentence.
The 20-year prison term was handed down on Friday to 19-year-old Demarkus Hedges in Boone County Circuit Court.
It matches a recommendation from prosecutors reached as part of Hedges’ guilty plea last month to manslaughter, tampering with evidence and wanton endangerment.
He admitted to fatally shooting Tucker, albeit unintentionally, while mishandling a gun and fleeing the crime scene with the firearm to keep it from the police.
“This is a tragic, tragic situation,” Judge Richard Brueggemann said of the teen’s death.
Tucker’s family and loved ones filled one side of the courtroom Friday. Lining the aisleway were cardboard posters covered with pictures of Tucker and decorated with flowers and heart-shaped balloons.
“I wish every day that I could go back to that night and take everything back,” Hedges said in court apologizing to the teen’s family. “I’m not a bad person, just a young man who made a terribly irresponsible mistake.”
In a press release issued shortly after the January 2023 shooting, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said Hedges shot Tucker 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 when she refused to pick it up, but that’s not when he shot her.
Deputies arrived at the Silver Brook Drive home early on Jan. 3, 2023, to find Tucker already dead, the sheriff’s office said.
According to investigators, 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.
The teens told investigators that Hedges brought a gun with him into the home. 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. He previously said he was “playing” with the firearm when it went off.
Hedges surrendered to the U.S. Marshals Service in Covington roughly 12 hours later.
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 of Symmes Township 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, court records show.
“I hope that he does everything he can in prison to continue to better himself,” Clyde Bennett II, one of Hedges’ attorneys, said in a statement.
Bennett said the manslaughter charge Hedges pleaded guilty to reflects the fact the shooting was an accident. He said Hedges will be eligible for parole in roughly three years.
“They say everyone makes mistakes,” Hedges said, “but my mistake is one I can never take back.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Man sentenced for 'playing' with gun, killing NKY teen Scarlett Tucker
