The young man seemingly so miffed over getting banned from a shopping mall and being told he was too young to buy cannabis products that he shot two shopkeepers and a dog is getting the same deal under one judge that another judge rejected in March.
Jalontae Truriel Percer pleaded guilty Friday to several charges, including two counts of unlawful wounding, and will serve no more than six years. Judge Cheryl Higgins accepted that deal.
“The court will do so, finding it is appropriate,” said Higgins in Albemarle County Circuit Court.
Prosecutor Susan Baumgartner told The Daily Progress that the deal Higgins accepted is the same as the one previously rejected. And as revealed in court Friday, the deal calls for so much suspended time that the maximum active sentence would be six years instead of the statutory maximum of 14 years.
“We worked hard with the victims to present an offer we thought was appropriate,” Baumgartner told the Progress.
Prior court testimony indicates that Percer, his brother and two other men were asked on Sept. 13 of last year to leave the Supreme Green shop at Charlottesville’s Fashion Square mall, which sells products containing the hallucinogenic compound THC. At a preliminary hearing, the manager testified to informing the group that their unruly behavior meant they would not be welcome back at the mall.
Moments later, after the store closed for the evening and after another encounter in the food court, Percer unleashed a volley of bullets as the two shopkeepers passed by a mall exit in a car.
The store’s owner and manager Jerome Henry was hit by multiple bullets, as was employee Eliazar Prieto. Also injured was Henry’s puppy, Coco. A police detective found the vehicle riddled by bullets with eight 9mm shell casings nearby.
The day after the shooting, Albemarle detectives, acting with a search warrant, raided Percer’s apartment in the Brookdale complex near Old Lynchburg Road. There, in addition to two cell phones, clothes, backpacks and 2 to 3 ounces of marijuana, they seized a Taurus 9mm pistol, a silencer and Percer himself.
On Friday, dressed in the striped jumpsuit of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, where he has been held since his arrest, Percer politely answered a series of questions from the judge.
“Yes, your honor,” “No, your honor,” and “Yes, ma’am,” he said to Higgins’ questions.
“I have one more comment,” said the judge sitting up straight in her chair after setting a formal sentencing date.
“The court would be interested to know how this defendant got here,” said Higgins, noting no prior felony convictions for the now 20-year-old Percer.
“He’s been articulate; he’s been composed,” Higgins continued. “How in the world did he end up at a mall with a gun shooting two people?”
Percer’s lawyer Thomas Wilson may try to answer that question during the Aug. 22 sentencing, but Wilson requested only 30 minutes for that hearing, a duration that won’t allow for extensive amounts of testimony and other evidence.
While the prior judge gave no official reason for rejecting the plea in March, he was Claude Worrell, a former prosecutor who has delivered sharp criticism from the bench regarding the proliferation of guns in society. In multiple cases, Worrell has said that the presence of firearms tends to turn disagreements that might otherwise have ended with punches or arguments into life-shattering events.
Baumgartner told Worrell in March that she couldn’t guarantee that a jury would find that Percer fired with malice at the shopkeepers, so she agreed to downgrade the original charges from malicious wounding to unlawful wounding in the deal.
“I don’t think it will bother Judge Worrell that his colleague accepted it,” said longtime Charlottesville criminal defense attorney Scott Goodman. “Every judge has their own philosophy about what they deem to be acceptable.”
The deal limits Percer’s active sentence on the two unlawful wounding charges to three years, accepts the legal minimum of three years on the firearms charge and suspends all 12 months on the misdemeanor animal cruelty charge for the injuries to Coco, the dog. The deal drops a second felony firearms count, assigns two years of probation and mandates mental health counseling for Percer.
“Judges are aware of the hard work that both sides put into reaching an agreement and trust that both sides are operating in good faith in presenting to the court something they feel is justified,” said Goodman. “And judges also like to keep the docket moving.”
For the employee struck twice by bullets in an arm and once in the abdomen, moving forward and not focusing on the deal is the order of the day, Prieto told The Daily Progress Friday.
“I don’t have many thoughts on that,” Prieto. “I’m mainly interested in putting this whole situation behind me. I know the owner is as well.”
Asked about Coco, Prieto reports that the dog now rarely comes to the shop and seems fearful of people.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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