From the The Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ.
Shortly before a judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison yesterday for the stabbing death of a 15-year-old lesbian in downtown Newark, Richard McCullough felt the wrath of the victim’s family.
LaTona Gunn, the mother of Sakia Gunn, stood in the Newark courtroom and demanded that McCullough look at two photographs of her slain daughter — one taken in happier times and one of her lying on a hospital gurney.
“This is the way Sakia looked before you ran into her,” Gunn said as McCullough bowed his head. “And this is the way she looked the last time I saw her.”
Sakia Gunn’s cousin, Valencia Bailey, who was the same age and was with her the night of the killing, was even more pointed.
Wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with her cousin’s picture and the words “R.I.P. Sakia,” Bailey said Sakia was like a twin sister to her and that she has had thoughts of suicide since her cousin’s death.
“I watched my cousin get killed in front of my eyes,” Bailey said, breaking down in sobs. “I watched her take her last breath and her eyes roll back in her head in my lap. He killed my cousin, and she is never coming back.”
A few moments later, Superior Court Judge Paul Vichness sentenced the 31-year-old McCullough for killing Gunn because she and her friends refused his advances and told him they were gay.
The Newark teenager was stabbed to death about 3:20 a.m. on May 11, 2003, as she and four friends were waiting for a bus at Broad and Market streets after coming home from a club in New York’s Greenwich Village.
McCullough, also of Newark, killed Gunn during a dispute that began when he and a friend, Allen Pierce, were driving by and asked the girls if they wanted to party. The girls responded that they were gay and not interested.
The case brought about one of the state’s first bias murder prosecutions because McCullough shouted anti-gay slurs as he argued with Gunn and her friends. It also brought attention to a large population of gay teenagers in Newark, which had been largely invisible before the crime.
Laquetta Nelson, who founded a gay rights organization called Newark Pride Alliance after Gunn was killed, said she hoped the case would send a message that hatred and violence are tearing the city apart.
“This case touched people all over the country,” she said. “We even heard from people in England and France. There are too many kids dying in this city. We have to all work to make that stop.”
McCullough pleaded guilty in March to aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault, bias intimidation and other crimes. As part of a plea bargain, Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Thomas McTigue dropped the murder charge, which would have carried a penalty of 30 years in prison without parole if he were convicted.
Before Vichness imposed sentence, members of Gunn’s family criticized the plea bargain, which will allow McCullough to be eligible for parole in 17 years.
“He said he’s sorry for what happened. Why was he carrying around a knife?” said Anthony Hall, Gunn’s cousin. “He should get the max. We’re not getting justice today. We’re getting robbed.”
But McTigue said afterward that members of the Gunn family were consulted before the plea was accepted and that they were satisfied with it. McTigue said his office has to consider the evidence and the probable outcome of a trial when deciding on a plea.
“There is always frustration on sentence day,” he said. “What they truly wanted I couldn’t give them. I couldn’t give them Sakia back.”
McCullough, a strapping man with long braided hair whose only previous conviction was for marijuana possession, apologized to his family and Gunn’s mother before his sentencing.
“I wish that would have been me instead of your child,” he said.
McCullough’s lawyer, John McMahon, asked Vichness for leniency, pointing out that his client had been employed most of his adult life and had no arrests for a serious crime. He also said his client was not homophobic.
“There are people who go out and target people because of their religions, their race or their sexual orientation,” he said. “That didn’t happen here.”
The defendant’s mother, Benita McCullough, addressed the court and said her son was friendly to anyone he ever met and never showed any signs of violence. She said he also was a bright child.
“We all thought Rich was going to be a genius,” she said.
McTigue urged the judge to adhere to the terms of the plea bargain, saying that the anti-gay sentiments McCullough expressed during the killing “tear at the fabric of society.”
Vichness said he found some mitigating facts in the defendant’s favor — like his relatively clean record — but he could not ignore the seriousness of the crime. He said Gunn had overcome adversity in her background and had a promising future.
“This is a young lady who would have accomplished a lot in her life,” Vichness said.