Judge rejects leniency for boy
A teenager who, along with two older friends, conned a Las Vegas woman into helping them before they shot her and left her for dead received no leniency Wednesday from District Judge Sally Loehrer.
Loehrer gave the baby- faced La Marcus Gamble the same sentence that she gave his codefendants: 12 to 30 years in prison.
"You’ll still be a very young man when you come out. It’s up to you to decide in the next 12 years what kind of man you’re going to be," Loehrer told Gamble, 15.
Sierra Miller, 20, was with her father and her wheelchair-bound mother at their home in the 3800 block of Eblick Wash Drive, near Pecos and Alexander roads on June 27, when Gamble knocked on their door asking for help.
He and Markell Jones, 17, told her that they were being chased and asked to use her phone. Miller eventually offered to take them home and, as she drove away from her house in her Volkswagen Beetle, Deandre Hudson, 20, rode up on a bicycle and jumped into the car.
They told Miller to drive out into the desert, authorities said. When she refused and got out of the vehicle, Gamble and Jones beat her, and Hudson shot her in the chest. They stole her car and later torched it, prosecutor Danae Adams said.
"He (Gamble) was just as involved," Adams said, noting that Gamble brought the gun into the situation.
Miller survived.
Gamble’s attorney, Charles Waterman, implored Loehrer to be lenient. He said Gamble, 14 at the time of the crime, should have been adjudicated in the juvenile court system.
Family Court Judge William Voy certified Gamble, who had a smattering of burglary charges on his record, to stand trial as an adult in October.
In Family Court, Gamble said he had tried cocaine several weeks before the incident and had started doing the drug daily.
He dropped out of school in the seventh grade, and Waterman argued that he didn’t have the mental capacity to think up this crime or lead its commission.
Gamble originally was charged with attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon among other charges. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery, robbery with use of a deadly weapon and battery with use of a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm.
Waterman said the teen does not have much family support. His older siblings also have been incarcerated. "Society has failed him, his family has failed him," Waterman said.
Gamble probably will be incarcerated at the prison in Jean. Waterman said his client "thought that was satisfactory because his brother is there and can take care of him."
