SALT LAKE CITY, Utah June 17, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — A judge made sure a man who fatally shot one person while holding four others at gunpoint, including a 4-year-old, will never get out of prison.
A 3rd District Court jury needed only three hours of deliberation in March after a four-day trial to convict Shaun Eugene Fleming of murdering 30-year-old Toussaint âT.J.â LâOuverture Tyler Jr. over a debt in 2017 in Tyler’s Taylorsville home.
Fleming, 42, was also convicted on three counts of aggravated kidnapping for binding three of Tyler’s roommates with duct tape while threatening them with a gun. He was also found guilty of child kidnapping for holding and threatening to shoot a 4-year-old child. All are first-degree felonies, as is murder.
Friday, Judge Elizabeth Hruby-Wells sentenced Fleming to 15-years-to-life in prison for the murder and life-without-parole on each of the four kidnapping counts, court records show.
She then ordered those sentences to be served consecutively, that is, five life sentences served one after the other.
He was also sentenced to five-years-to-life each on his convictions for aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery, also first-degree felonies. And he earned one-to-15-years each for obstruction of justice and possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, second-degree felonies. Those sentences will run concurrent to the murder and kidnapping terms.
“We thank the judge for imposing the maximum sentence in this case,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said. “We know this will not bring closure to the family, but we hope it can bring some measure of justice for the loss of their loved one.” He lauded the work of the Unified Police Department on the case as well as prosecutors Josh Graves and Heather Lindsay and staff.
