Global Courant 2023-05-26 19:30:28
A former ice cream truck driver convicted of killing two people and seriously injuring four others in a 2010 Florida shooting was sentenced to life in prison on Friday, more than 12 years after the attack.
Michael Keetley was convicted in March of two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder.
“This has been a very long road and a very difficult case,” Judge Christopher Sabella said in announcing the verdict. “What it shows to the victims in this case is that justice isn’t always quick, but justice is ultimately served.”
Sabella sentenced Keetley to life in prison on each of the six charges he faced, with no possibility of parole.
Juan Guitron, 28, and Sergio Guitron, 22, were fatally shot in November 2010 and four others were seriously injured on the front porch of a house in Ruskin, Florida, while celebrating Thanksgiving.
Prosecutors argued that Keetley committed the attack in a case of mistaken identity that was the deadly culmination of an obsession with revenge. Keetley had been robbed and shot about a year before the murders and, frustrated with the official investigation into the robbery, prosecutors said, decided to take matters into his own hands.
The former ice cream man became mistakenly convinced that a man nicknamed “Creeper” was behind the robbery and went looking for him that night in November 2010. The deaths and injuries were unrelated to Keetley’s robbery, prosecutors said. Nor was the man nicknamed Creeper, who was not among the six men shot at the house in Ruskin, police said.
The defense argued the survivors of the shooting identified the wrong man and that Keetley was unable to carry out the attack due to injuries sustained when he was shot and robbed months earlier.
“This is our defense, Michael Keetley is not guilty because he didn’t do it. Michael Keetley didn’t, he couldn’t. He is medically incapable’ said attorney John Grant during the process.
Richard Escobar, another member of the defense, argued that law enforcement made multiple mistakes after the 2010 attack, saying that “the investigation that followed was nothing short of a nightmare itself.”
Before the verdict was handed down Friday, a judge rejected requests for a retrial and acquittal.
Lawyers for Keetley said after the sentencing they plan to appeal.
Paz Quezada, the mother of Juan and Sergio Guitron, addressed Keetley directly at the sentencing hearing, telling him that he “took half my life away” and “destroyed my heart”.
“My sons were all I had,” Quezada said. “I loved them with all my heart.”
Quezada told NBC News prior to sentencing that Friday was also her birthday, and that her only wish that she’s held onto since the night of the attack is that the man who tore her close-knit family apart be found dead for the rest of her life. locked up. his life.
“It’s the best gift God could give me,” Quezada said with tears in his eyes. She said she had prayed for the strength to live to see the day when her sons would receive justice. “I will continue to fight for my sons. I will never forget them.”
