Kokomo man gets 25 years in 2020 fatal shooting
Aug. 11—A Kokomo man who pleaded guilty earlier this summer in connection with a December 2020 fatal shooting was sentenced to 25 years in the Indiana Department of Correction for his role in that incident.
Kevonte Tyler, 24, will serve 12 1/2 of those years in jail, two years on work release, three years on in-home detention and the remainder on supervised probation after pleading guilty to a Level 2 felony charge of conspiracy to commit murder, according to the plea agreement.
The sentence will run consecutively with another case, in which Tyler also pleaded guilty to two Level 5 charges of intimidation and being a felon in possession of a firearm with a prior conviction within 15 years.
On that separate case — involving an incident of shots fired on North Union Street in October 2020 — Tyler was sentenced to 36 months in the IDOC, with two years in jail and the balance suspended to supervised probation.
During a sentencing hearing Thursday afternoon inside Howard Superior Court 4, Tyler appeared via Zoom from the Howard County Jail and talked about the two shootings, particularly the one in December 2020.
It was just after midnight on Dec. 23, 2020, when police located the body of 42-year-old Sharman Pearson at a residence in the 800 block of East Broadway Street.
Pearson had suffered several apparent gunshot wounds, and he was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.
But according to court records, it was reportedly Pearson's girlfriend who was actually the intended target of the shooting.
A Chicago man, Terrance Ben, was later charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and burglary in connection to the shooting.
And along with Tyler, other co-defendants were Kokomo residents Marquis Herron, Amari Deaarion Anderson, Kyron McKnight and Dion Creed Smith.
They were each originally arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.
However, many of them had that particular charge dismissed in favor of an amended count of assisting a criminal and have since been sentenced to penalties ranging from probation to six years in the IDOC.
Speaking about that December 2020 shooting during Thursday's sentencing hearing, Tyler told the court he was sorry for what happened that day.
"I'm sorry for my actions that I took in both cases," he stated. "I'm sorry for what happened to the person that died. I feel like this was unnecessary."
Tyler also admitted that when he was in jail in late 2020, he reached out to Anderson about shooting and killing Pearson's girlfriend because she was a witness against him in the October 2020 shooting on North Union Street.
But Tyler added that he couldn't remember speaking to any of the other co-defendants about the conspiracy to murder the woman.
Now with Tyler's sentencing, Ben is the only one left on the court calendar in connection to Pearson's shooting.
He has a pretrial conference in November inside Howard Superior Court 4, with a trial slated for early December.
