Toledoan gets prison time for role in fatal shooting

4/24/2018

A Toledo man who provided the gun used to kill another man was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison.

Ruamone Searcy, 18, of the 600 block of Winthrop Street pleaded guilty April 11 to complicity to felonious assault with a firearm specification before Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Myron Duhart.

By entering the guilty plea, Searcy admitted he gave Deshone Sykes the handgun Sykes used to shoot Jonathan Cain, 24, on March 1, 2017, outside an apartment in the 800 block of Walnut Street. Sykes and Cain had fought inside the apartment, but Cain began to run when Searcy gave Sykes the gun and Sykes fired twice.

Sykes, 22, pleaded guilty April 11 to involuntary manslaughter with a firearm specification, two counts of felonious assault, and having a weapon while under disability. Judge Duhart sentenced him to an agreed-upon term of 20 years in prison.

In court Tuesday, the judge said he was disappointed to see that Searcy had told the pre-sentence department that he didn't know how Sykes got the gun.

“I was hoping you were going to own it, and you didn't own it,” the judge said.

Defense attorney Ronnie Wingate said Searcy was a young man — just 17 at the time of the homicide — and that he made a mistake and realized he made a mistake.

For his part, Searcy apologized to his family and to the Cain family.

Judge Duhart also ordered that Searcy pay $9,400 in restitution to the Cain family for the victim's funeral expenses.