A man who fatally shot an 18-year-old Navy sailor in East Village was sentenced Monday to 10 years in state prison.<\/p>\n
Ta’Kari Terell Benness, 21, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and a gun allegation for the Aug. 31, 2024, killing of Albert Lee Soto, an operations specialist seaman apprentice who was assigned to the San Diego-based destroyer USS Pinckney. Soto, a native of Queens, New York, had reported to San Diego for military service in April of 2024, six months after enlisting, according to the Navy.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTwo young men died in two separate shootings over the holiday weekend. One relates to a series of shootings in Chicano Park. The other death is a Navy Sailor. NBC 7\u2019s Kelvin Henry has the details.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
At Benness’ arraignment, a prosecutor said the shooting stemmed from a fight between two groups of people at a local nightclub, which spilled into an argument outside.<\/p>\n
Deputy District Attorney Matthew Carberry said Benness and\/or members of his group said something to the effect of, “I will air this [expletive] out. I’ve got my gun in the car.”<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said Soto left, but later returned, “demanding a one-on-one fight in retribution for the fight that took place in the club.” Benness then pulled out a gun and shot the victim, according to the prosecutor.<\/p>\n
Soto was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n
Carberry said Benness then fled California on a Greyhound bus. He was arrested nearly two months later in St. Cloud, Minnesota.<\/p>\n
At his sentencing hearing, Benness apologized and said, “I don’t like the fact that I took another man’s life.”<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAn 18-year-old servicemember was killed and four people wanted in connection with his death are on the run. NBC 7’s Kelvin Henry reports.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
However, he also claimed Soto followed him and “put me in a weird position,” drawing anger from several of Soto’s family members who attended court or viewed the hearing remotely.<\/p>\n
Some of Soto’s loved ones alleged Benness bragged about the killing on social media.<\/p>\n
A letter read in court from the victim’s mother, Sarria Soto, called the 10-year sentence “a slap in the face” and “a number that allows [Benness] to start over someday, but my pain will remain for a lifetime.”<\/p>\n
Her letter, directed toward Benness, also read, “I don’t want sympathy. I want you to feel the weight of what you did. You took something you can never give back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who fatally shot an 18-year-old Navy sailor in East Village was sentenced Monday to 10 years…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":301448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1035,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-301447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-crime-and-courts","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115370081846674987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}