Marksville (LA) officer sent to prison for 40 years for killing 6-year-old boy

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http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/03/marksville_police_killing_sent.html#incart_2box_nola_river_orleans_news

Forty years in prison. That's the price Derrick Stafford, a former deputy Marksville marshal, must pay for fatally shooting 6-year-old Jeremy Mardis and wounding his unarmed father, crimes that shook this town of 5,500 and drew international attention in a year marked by police gunning down 991 people across the United States.

Judge Billy Bennett of the 12th Judicial District Court handed down the sentence Friday (March 31) before a standing-room-only crowd in a third-floor courtroom at the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse. He ordered that half the prison term be served without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence. By law, Stafford had faced 10 to 60 years in prison.

Relatives and friends connected to both sides of the case sat on the courtroom's seven, church-style wooden pews or, in some cases, stood in silence as Bennett read his eight-page Reasons for Sentencing statement. Through much of the recitation, the only other sound heard in the small courtroom was an aging air conditioning unit struggling to keep pace as the outside temperature rose to 80 degrees.

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Jeremy had been riding in the car with his father, Christopher Few, on Nov. 3, 2015, when Stafford and deputy marshal Norris Greenhouse Jr. began following them around town and trying to stop them for reasons that have never been fully explained. After two miles, Few pulled over, but Stafford and Greenhouse fired 18 at shots at the vehicle, killing the boy and severely wounding his father.