Two gunmen who traded shots at a Bronx basketball tournament, with one of the bullets killing a 4-year-old boy, were sentenced to lengthy jail terms Tuesday on what would have been the victim’s seventh birthday.
Rondell Pinkerton, 20, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April, was sentenced to 20 years in prison plus five years of supervised release.
Authorities said it was a bullet from Pinkerton’s gun that killed little Lloyd Morgan, who was enjoying a summer day at a nearby playground on July 22, 2012.
Suspect Ronald Jeffrey was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal possession of a weapon.
Officials said at least 13 rounds were fired from either side of the basketball court and adjacent playground during the brief shootout. One of the rounds hit young Lloyd in the head as he stood with his mother, who called him “Chris.”
“Today is my son’s birthday,” Shianne Norman said. “Chris would have been 7 today and instead of my family yesterday throwing a barbecue, and bringing in the summer, having Memorial Day, I did nothing, but think about this day right here. How I was going to have to make an impact statement to people, to two men who I don’t even think give two damns about the fact that they took my son’s life.”
The boy’s father, Lloyd Morgan Sr., said the jail-bound gunmen “are not men.”
“I just hope to hell that every second that you are in your cell, you feel the pain and the wrath that God has for you,” Morgan said. “People who had never seen my son saw him for the first time in the paper because he was shot in the head.
“I’m not that dude to preach forgiveness,” Morgan said. “I don’t forgive s–t, and that whole time that you spend in, I hope that you spend it in the f–king worst way.”
Jeffrey tried to sound contrite about the killing, but his words did not sway Lloyd’s angry parents or the judge.
“I just want to say, um, I’m sorry for what happened,” Jeffrey said. “And, um, it’s sad. When I come home, I wish I can have kids and love them like she loved her boy.”
Judge Steven Barrett denounced the violence that silenced a young child.
“We have to recognize that there are a number of serious illnesses this community suffers, and one of them is the presence of gangs and the existence of gang warfare.”