Left inset: Sequoya Bacon-Jones (WTXF/YouTube). Right inset: Isiah Roberts (Mercer County Correction Center). Background: A bench in the New Jersey courtyard where 9-year-old Sequoya Bacon-Jones was gunned down and killed by Isiah Roberts (WTXF/YouTube).
A New Jersey man is headed to prison for gunning down a girl playing outside with her brother and friends — killing the 9-year-old in front of their mom — after opening fire on a “family nemesis” he was beefing with online.
Isiah M. Roberts, who was 19 at the time of the 2022 slaying, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Friday for the death of Sequoya Bacon-Jones, a fourth grader from Trenton who ran for cover after Roberts opened fire in an apartment courtyard where she was playing.
The shooting was related to a “stupid” Facebook beef that Roberts had with the intended target, according to the victim’s family and the man’s lawyer.
Roberts, now 23, pleaded guilty in April to aggravated manslaughter. He did not speak at his sentencing.
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“I do forgive him,” said Sequoya’s mother, Sacha Bacon-Jones, in court on Friday, according to NJ.com. “God told me to and it only feels right to, because if I don’t, I will harbor hatred and I don’t want to harbor hatred.”
Roberts’ attorney, John W. Hartmann, previously outlined the events that led up to the shooting, admitting that it stemmed from a Facebook feud, NJ.com reported.
Hartmann said Roberts was contacted by his mother and sister over the online beef and told to “get down to Kingsbury” — the apartments where Sequoya was playing outside — after a fight broke out involving the sister, which stemmed from the Facebook feud. When Roberts arrived, Hartmann said, he was given the name of a “family nemesis” whom police said was his intended victim.
Roberts retrieved a 9 mm pistol from an apartment and then saw the “family nemesis,” whom he believed also had a handgun, outside, Hartmann said. Roberts opened fire and struck Sequoya as she tried running away with her brother. Their mother was outside at the time and tried to help her, along with local residents, before police arrived.
“He shot off two rounds first, everybody scattered, and then he shot off another four rounds and my daughter got hit,” Bacon-Jones said in a 2022 interview with Philadelphia CBS affiliate KYW.
“I run up and my baby is laying on the ground covered in blood,” Bacon-Jones recounted, describing Sequoya as her “little girl,” per KYW. “She’s not crying at all, she’s just like moaning and she’s reaching for me and I’m like I can’t believe what I’m looking at. It’s not really happening, but it’s really happening.”
Hartmann has previously said that Roberts did not intend to harm Sequoya, according to NJ.com. He admitted, however, that Roberts did show a reckless disregard for human life that warranted the manslaughter charge.
Bacon-Jones described the beef that sparked the shooting as “stupid Facebook stuff” while speaking to reporters at a news conference after her daughter‘s death.
“Now all I have are memories I can’t make anymore,” Bacon-Jones said.
As part of his plea deal, Roberts was expected to spend between 15 and 18 years in prison, according to NJ.com.
“He has accepted responsibility,” Hartmann told the court at his plea hearing in April. “He really feels horrible about what occurred.”
The judge who sentenced Roberts told the court that he “unnecessarily” escalated the situation “by introducing a firearm into what was at the time merely a physical altercation,” according to NJ.com.
“The defendant exercised terrible judgment,” the judge concluded.
The post Teen shot little girl playing outside in front of her mom while fuming over a ‘stupid’ Facebook beef — now he is headed to prison for years first appeared on Law & Crime.
