Man sentenced to prison for fatal October shooting

A 22-year-old man was sentenced Friday to 11 to 28 years in prison for shooting two people in October, killing one.

John Kirby pleaded guilty in December to voluntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon and battery with a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm, court records show. On Oct. 10, Kirby shot and killed a man following an argument on a Regional Transportation Commission bus, and later shot into a car during a separate argument, wounding another.

“It just seems so senseless,” District Judge Jacqueline Bluth said during Kirby’s sentencing hearing on Friday. “And I think that Mr. Kirby is lucky that he’s not here on two bodies.”

The argument on the bus between Kirby and two others led to the men agreeing to get off the bus and fight, according to Kirby’s arrest report. The men got out near Paradise Road and Sahara Avenue, where 27-year-old Jettoni Zendel threw a punch at Kirby.

The 22-year-old then shot Zendel and ran away, said Kirby’s defense attorney, Scott Coffee.

A short time later, Kirby said he and a group of people in a car at a gas station got into an argument regarding Kirby’s family member who had recently died, Coffee said. Kirby shot at the group, hitting one of the car’s passengers in the lower back.

In a letter to the judge, Kirby detailed his troubled childhood and history of drug addiction, and prosecutor Michelle Fleck said he showed “obvious remorse.”

“But there are such alarming issues both in his history, in his person, the way that he deals with conflict resolution,” Fleck said.

Coffee said Kirby should never have had a gun that night in October, but that he has since taken responsibility for his actions.

“I think the court’s real dilemma here is, is this somebody that has to be warehoused forever?” Coffee said.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.