A 20-year-old man who was a teenager when prosecutors said he was involved in the fatal shooting of another teen four years ago has pleaded guilty to attempted murder.
Dashaun Jones pleaded guilty to the charge April 8 in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. Jones acknowledged being complicit in the incident, but according to his attorney, has always been adamant that he was not the shooter.
Attorney Brandon Fox, who started representing Jones about a year and a half ago, said he tracked down someone who witnessed the 2022 shooting.
That person “stated definitively that Dashaun was not the shooter,” Fox told The Enquirer.
Fox said he provided that information to the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office, which talked to the witness and ultimately allowed Jones to plead to attempted murder.
In court on April 8, Judge Christopher McDowell sentenced Jones to nine to 13½ years in prison.
Jones, who was 16 when he was arrested, received credit for more than 3½ years he already has spent in custody.
Gunfire came from vehicle with several people inside
The shooting happened the night of May 29, 2022, on Betton Street in the West End, after an earlier altercation at Taste of Cincinnati. Officials have previously described Jones as a known gang member.
He was one of several people in a vehicle that police connected to the shooting. Initially, prosecutors said Jones got out of the vehicle and fired a gun, killing 15-year-old Jerome Lipscomb III. A second person was grazed by a bullet.
Jones was later found with a gun that matched the one used in the shooting.
According to the prosecutor’s office, no other suspects were ever charged in the shooting, and without evidence that Jones fired the gun, that led to the attempted murder plea.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: ‘Not the shooter.’ How fatal shooting case became attempted murder
Reporting by Kevin Grasha, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
