Stacey Jones
Kendra St. Clair said she learned at least one thing from a 2012 home invasion in which she shot intruder Stacey Adam Jones.
“You shouldn’t go into anyone else’s property … in Oklahoma.”
St. Clair was 12 when Jones entered her home last year. She was home alone, watching TV, and hid in a closet after grabbing her mom’s .40-caliber Glock pistol while talking to police dispatchers on a cell phone.
As Jones turned the door knob to the closet, St. Clair fired through the door, striking Jones in the upper torso. He ran out of the home, was captured, treated for a minor wound and has been in jail since.
Jones, who turns 33 this week, will serve 25 years of a 30-year sentence behind bars. District Judge Mark Campbell handed down the sentence today after Jones entered a “blind plea” last month.
As a two-time felon who was on probation at the time of the burglary, Jones faced between 20 years and life in prison. Now he will serve probation after his release some time around his 60th birthday.
“Everything is going to work out the way it should have,” said Kendra’s mother, Debra St. Clair. “There’s a sense of security knowing he is not going to be back around. We thank Judge Campbell for making a ruling sufficient to fit the crime.”
Both sides spoke at a brief sentencing hearing on Tuesday. Mrs. St. Clair and her daughter both provided written statements.
“When you think about a burglary, you think of things taken from your home. But what you took from my daughter has caused a lot more trauma and turmoil,” Mrs. St. Clair said at the sentencing. “Your decision to break into my home was the wrong decision. And that scar from the bullet wound, you will take with you from now on. I hope you decide to make better choices.”
Jones gave his account of the burglary, to which he had previously confessed.
“It was just stupidity. I had been taking drugs for a little bit. A lot of it, I don’t remember. What I remember is walking down that road,” Jones said at the hearing. “I really just want to apologize to the family. I really do. It’s what has been on my mind lately, it’s what God put on my heart.”
Kendra St. Clair shed a few tears as the sentence was handed down, and she was consoled by her mother and others that “it’s over.”
Post a Comment
