Expand<\/a><\/p>\nThey lamented being forced to talk about Eric in the past tense. They also talked about the difficulty of facing Strother in court while testifying on the witness stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t testify to ruin the defendant\u2019s life,\u201d the girl who was unscathed told the court. \u201cI testified to get Eric justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes me so sick that even though he took a child\u2019s life, he showed no remorse,\u201d she said, adding that she still has sleepless nights because of what she saw.<\/p>\n
The injured girl loved to play basketball but that was taken away after she was shot in the leg, she wrote in her statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt changed the way I see the world,\u201d she said, adding that the pain in her leg is a \u201creminder of something we never wished to experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eric\u2019s grandmother, Sonia Age, also spoke and said she hoped that Strother would \u201calways see (Eric\u2019s) smile, and I hope you find God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scipio, who testified against Strother and took a plea deal to voluntary manslaughter, apologized to the victims and their families in a statement to the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so sorry for the role I played and the action I didn\u2019t take,\u201d Scipio wrote, adding she was sorry for \u201cnot protecting your children\u201d and that she \u201cshould have been a stronger person instead of a coward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am sick to my stomach with shame,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Scipio was sentenced on Sept. 30 to six years as a result of the plea deal. She and Strother have been in custody since their arrests two months after the shooting.<\/p>\n
Strother had sought retaliation after he was shot at while driving Scipio\u2019s car earlier that day near Orange Avenue and Hellman Street, evidence presented during the case showed. Strother was not hit, but a bullet grazed the car.<\/p>\n
Scipio had attempted to keep Strother from using her car to carry out his plan. Surveillance video from a hotel they stayed at shows Strother slam Scipio onto the car and choke her for several seconds before letting her go. They both then got in the car and left, picking up two other men in Downey and Carson before the shooting.<\/p>\n
Those men were not involved in the case against Strother and Scipio. It was unclear if they were identified or arrested.<\/p>\n
In September, a jury convicted Strother of murder, three counts of attempted murder, assault by means of force, conspiracy to commit murder, and unlawful firearm activity.<\/p>\n
Two of the charges stemmed from a shooting in Los Angeles when Strother injured two people, including Scipio, at a recording studio. The other victim in that shooting was left paralyzed.<\/p>\n
Judge Laura Laesecke on Wednesday referenced evidence that showed the men in the car had intimidated other people with their guns before firing upon the children.<\/p>\n
She said the case involved \u201ca lot of violence, very scary.\u201d She referenced the egregiousness of the crimes and the planning that went into the shooting of the children, including the turning off cellphones and leaving them elsewhere so they couldn\u2019t be tracked.<\/p>\n
The judge imposed the harshest penalties on all but one count.<\/p>\n
Before the sentencing, Strother was given a chance to speak. He turned toward the victims and their families and apologized, said he wanted to ask for their forgiveness and said he had no excuses.<\/p>\n
Strother said he did not know he had killed a child until he turned his phone back on and learned about it through Google. He said Eric\u2019s death was a result of his \u201ccompulsive decisions, compulsive behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he sees Eric\u2019s face every night.<\/p>\n
At the time of the shooting, he had a three-year-old son and Scipio was pregnant with his other son.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will pay my debt to you and society for hurting children,\u201d Strother said. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t called for. They were children.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 24-year-old Cypress man who went out in search of rival gang members to shoot in Long Beach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,1312,138,2461,131,133,132,137,100,611,136],"class_list":["post-488386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-cypress","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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