An Akron woman said she didn’t intend to harm her longtime boyfriend as the two fought in May 2015.
Bernetta Vickers said she and Dontay Dudley struggled over a gun, and Dudley was shot and killed.
“I was trying to get him not to shoot me — not to hurt me,” Vickers said during her sentencing Wednesday afternoon, wiping tears from her face as she spoke. “I went through so much with him, but I never wished any harm on him. I just wanted him to stop hurting me.”
Vickers’ tearful statement, her first public explanation of what happened, capped an emotional sentencing in Summit County Common Pleas Court in which supporters of Vickers and Dudley packed the courtroom and gave impassioned pleas to Judge Lynne Callahan. Vickers’ supporters, noting the couple’s volatile relationship, urged leniency, while Dudley’s family argued for the maximum prison time.
Callahan landed in the middle, sentencing Vickers to 12 years in prison when she faced up to 17 years. The judge noted inconsistencies between Vickers’ statements and the evidence, but also her lack of a criminal record.
“Your life changed, his was taken away and everyone in the back of the courtroom — their lives changed,” Callahan said.
After the sentencing, family members of the two sides briefly fought and shouted at each other outside the courthouse. Summit County sheriff’s deputies separated the two groups, getting one side to stay while the others went to their cars.
Vickers, 42, pleaded guilty in October under an agreement with prosecutors to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter with a gun specification and tampering with evidence. Prosecutors dropped the remaining charges.
Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Nick Buzzy described what the evidence at the scene showed about Dudley’s death. The details caused one of Dudley’s loved ones in the courtroom to pass out, collapsing onto others in his row. He was escorted out of the courtroom by a deputy.
Buzzy said Dudley was shot at 4:30 a.m. May 30, 2015, in the Coventry Street home he shared with Vickers, who called 911 a half-hour later. He said Dudley was shot in the kitchen, where an analyst found blood on the lower cabinets. He said this meant Dudley was still breathing and bleeding there.
“He was not killed instantly,” Buzzy said.
Buzzy said Dudley vomited after he was shot, stumbled across the kitchen and collapsed by the stove. He said there is no evidence that Vickers did anything to try to assist Dudley.
He said police found the pistol wedged between Dudley and the stove and a shell casing under a plate in the sink.
Buzzy said Vickers gave no explanation for why she waited to call 911, the downward trajectory of the bullet or why she didn’t try to help Dudley.
“Two people know what happened,” he said. “One is dead. Donte deserved more. Donte deserved better.”
Loretta Colvin, Dudley’s cousin, said Vickers gave different versions of what happened to the family — that Dudley shot himself, that they were struggling over the gun and that she was a domestic violence victim who was defending herself.
Bernadette Dudley, Donte Dudley’s mother, tearfully recounted learning about Donte’s death, which fell within two years of the death of her son Antawn, to a brain tumor.
“No one is a winner,” she said. “Bernetta, you took a life, therefore you deserve life. I forgive you, but I will never forget.”
Don Hicks, one of Vickers’ attorneys, said police found Vickers’ tooth in the house, which he said was knocked out when Dudley assaulted her before the shooting. He said it is unclear how much time passed between the shooting and 911 call.
Casey Cramer, Vickers’ other attorney, said Dudley had three domestic violence convictions, including one involving Vickers in 2010.
Leading up to the shooting, she said Vickers’ cellphone battery had died and she didn’t get Dudley’s repeated phone calls to her in which he got increasingly more angry. She said Dudley called Vickers’ mother repeatedly, telling her he had a gun and would be waiting for Vickers when she got home. Vickers, though, wasn’t warned.
Asia Vickers, Bernetta Vickers’ youngest sister, said she wishes her sister had sought help from her or someone else from the family. The family wore purple domestic-violence awareness ribbons to court.
“She’s been going through this silently,” she said. “She never stood a fighting chance the moment she walked into the house.”
Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at 330-996-3705, swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com and on Twitter: @swarsmithabj .