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CHESTER — The judge sat there
on the bench and admitted plainly, “I have no answer” to the guns and
violence he sees each day – and the seemingly endless line of young men
who appear in his courtroom after using guns and violence.
Circuit Court Judge Brooks Goldsmith did have one answer that matters most, though, for gun-toting cowards – prison.
This
time, 27 years in prison for a plea of guilty to manslaughter for a man
who has seen little else in his adult life but jail cells and
convictions for drugs and violence.
Keith Keener committed a
crime of shooting into a crowd of people outside a Chester
nightclub. It
is a miracle that others were not killed as Keener grabbed a gun he had
hidden and just started shooting into a wall of people.
“By
taking a gun to the club and hiding the gun, that tells me this was
premeditated, and you planned to use that gun,” Goldsmith told Keener.
Goldsmith then paused and gave the reason for
carrying a gun to a nightclub: “To shoot somebody.”
Keener,
24, a felon since 18 who was kicked out of school at 15, shot Antonio
“Jack” Price, 24, twice outside the Studio 72 nightclub.
“In the
course of an hour in Chester County, it doesn’t get any worse than
this,” prosecutor
Doug Barfield said in court Monday about that awful
night and early morning on Sept. 20, 2010.
The melee started,
Barfield said, with arguments between two groups of purportedly tough
young guys inside the Studio 72 nightclub after a motorcycle and car
show. They had allegedly sneaked guns into the nightclub using ladies
who weren’t searched as thoroughly.
Real tough guys – asking girls to carry iron for them.
People
began arguing and fighting inside. Many, including Keener, were tossed
out, and three people were shot. The mayhem then moved outside, where
Keener grabbed the gun he brought to a place where people dance and
laugh and fired into a crowd.
Minutes later, another man was
killed by bullets outside the hospital emergency room where the victims
of the first shooting had been taken.
The victim’s sister,
Danielle Jackson, was just as plain-spoken as the prosecutor, saying:
“As a citizen of this county, I don’t feel safe... For someone to pick
up a gun and kill somebody, then for someone to go to the hospital and
kill,
murder, it is unheard of.”
It is heard of in Chester, though.
Keener
faced a murder charge, but accepted a plea deal down to manslaughter.
Murder carries 30 years to life. Manslaughter carries up to 30 years.
Even
Keener’s lawyer,
6th Circuit Chief
Public Defender Mike Lifsey, said in
court that “multiple guns” in the hands of so many in Chester is a
societal crisis.
Family claimed Keener – out at 2 a.m. with a gun
after past convictions for drugs and mayhem – was in the wrong place at
the wrong time and fell in with the wrong crowd.
Barfield, the prosecutor, was having none of that.
“Keener is the wrong crowd,” said Barfield told the judge.
Chester
County Sheriff Richard Smith argued that Keener should get the full 30
years, saying that “10 or 15 people” could have been shot by Keener in
that parking lot on the J.A. Cochran Bypass.
The gunfire happened
next to a 24-hour grocery store and as many as 150 people were nearby
after spilling out of the nightclub where off-duty
sheriff’s deputies
were working because of regular trouble.
The club was later
evicted – but after the blood from gunshots ran inside and outside the
front door. The violence from that night is “all related,” Smith said in
court.
“The citizens of Chester County shouldn’t have to worry
about Keener out in the street, shooting somebody in a parking lot,”
Smith said.
Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/06/26/4071899/chester-nightclub-shooter-gets.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpy