A South Sacramento woman gets 10 years for the fatal shooting of a 38-year-old woman. Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi calls plea bargain on the manslaughter count a "reasonable resolution of the case"--perhaps because it occurred on what SacBee calls "drug-troubled Loucreta Drive."
South Sacramento woman gets 10 years for fatal shooting
Andy Furillo, Sacrametno Bee
Jul. 31, 2013
A shooting death on drug-troubled Loucreta Drive resulted Tuesday in a 10-year sentence for the woman who pulled the trigger.
Andreawanna Giavonniel Clemmons, 21, drew the term as a result of her no-contest plea to voluntary manslaughter in the 3:10 a.m. July 18, 2012, killing of Lisa Bisher, 38.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge John P. Winn's sentence affirmed a plea agreement between Sacramento prosecutors and Clemmons' attorney, Dionne E. Choyce.
The outcome did not go over well with the victim's father, Kenneth Bisher.
"I think it's a shame that she gets off with 10 years," Bisher said. "It really doesn't matter what happened, unless it was self-defense, which it wasn't. She didn't deserve to get shot. Nobody does."
Henry Clemmons, the defendant's father, speaking just a few feet from Kenneth Bisher outside Winn's courtroom in the downtown jail, expressed his family's condolences to the victim's.
"A loss of life can never be replaced," Clemmons said. "Regardless of the sentence today, she will be living a sentence for the rest of her life, knowing that she took a life. We are sorry this tragic event took place."
A quarter-mile stretch off Power Inn Road south of Florin Road, Loucreta Drive has long been a crime hot spot in Sacramento's unincorporated south area.
The fatal shooting of Bisher last year was the second homicide in the block in one two-week period. In the other, 3-year-old Jorge Azios III was shot and killed on July 4, 2012. Three defendants have since been charged with murder in the boy's shooting death and are awaiting a preliminary hearing scheduled for Aug. 29.
According to testimony at Clemmons' preliminary hearing last year, Bisher and a man identified as Darren August were walking past a residence in the 7900 block of Loucreta Drive that Clemmons shared with her fiancé, Christian Grayson, and their small child.
August told investigators that Grayson angrily told August and Bisher to quiet down and to keep moving.
August said when he and Bisher stopped again, Grayson walked up to him and punched him in the mouth. As their confrontation continued, August said he saw a woman come out of their house and that he heard two gunshots, according to testimony at Clemmons' preliminary hearing. August ran off before he realized Bisher was not with him. She was found lying in a nearby front yard with a gunshot wound to the chest. She was transported to a hospital, where she died.
Clemmons and Grayson gave sheriff's detectives a different account of what happened.
The defendant and her boyfriend, both of whom admittedly sold cocaine out of their house, according to authorities, said August tried to rob Grayson. One detective testified Clemmons told her she came outside and saw August on top of Grayson, then went back inside and retrieved a gun she had recently bought on the street. The detective said that Clemmons' statement was that when she returned to the melee with the gun in her hand the weapon accidentally discharged, with one bullet fatally striking Bisher.
Grayson and Clemmons hustled their small child into their vehicle and drove off, detectives said. She falsely told them the next day she was not home at the time of the shooting, and neither she nor Grayson ever told authorities what they did with the gun, according to her probation report.
The report said Clemmons once was placed on probation as a juvenile for assaulting a security officer on a light-rail train. She'd also been arrested once for hitting her stepsister with a brick, the report said.
In the probation report, Clemmons was quoted as saying, "I didn't mean to kill anyone. I want to apologize. It wasn't worth all this. I would give up everything I have to bring back that day. I took someone's life. I can never undo it."
Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi said his office agreed to the plea bargain on the manslaughter count because "when you break down all the evidence as we can prove it, the evidence that we can actually establish, this is a reasonable resolution of the case."
Choyce, the defense attorney for Clemmons, agreed it was a "reasonable resolution" to "a tragic story."
"Obviously an innocent person lost her life," Choyce said, while insisting, "at the same time, Ms. Clemmons was coming to the aid of her fiancé who was being attacked by the victim's boyfriend."
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/07/31/5610401/south-sacramento-woman-gets-10.html
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