Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Cleveland man found guilty last month of setting up the murder of former Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's 24-year-old grandson by luring him to the murder scene was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison with eligibility for parole in 33 years.
Cuyhog County Court of Common Pleas Judge Deanna Calabrese threw the book at Robert Shepherd, 30, whom jurors, on Oct 31, found guilty on all four counts, including murder, aggravated murder and felonious assault, in the shooting death in September of 2021 of Frank Q. Jackson, though he was not charged with pulling the trigger.
“Our city is a disaster when it comes to gun violence,” Calabrese said in sentencing Shepherd, a member of the notorious heartless felon gang. “There has to be something so dramatic that happens to stop it.”
The former mayor has not commented publicly since today's sentencing of the man who set his beloved grandson up to get murdered.
The killer, who gunned down Frank Q. Jackson in a hoodie on Sept 19, 2021, remains at large and police say they have no credible suspect leads. The former mayor has not spoken out publicly in response to the sentence of the man who killed his grandson.
Prosecutors pushed for a life sentence while defense attorneys argued that their client was not, in fact, the killer and deserved some leniency because, in spite of his lengthy criminal record, he has a history of mental ailments
Jackson's great grandson, Donald Jackson-Gates, 19, faces aggravated murder and several other charges in an unrelated case in what prosecutors say is a revenge killing of Shepherd's nephew, Cris'Shon Coleman, 20, of Cleveland.
Cleveland police homicide detectives built the case against Shepard largely through surveillance cameras that show him luring Frank Q Jackson to get murdered, but such cameras purportedly do not show the killer.
Shepherd remains in jail on a $1 million bond since his arrest just days after the former mayor's stepdaughter, Janece Jackson, the mother of the mayor's slain grandson, was found unresponsive at a home in Cleveland in October of 2021 and later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Police said that the cause of her death has not been made public. Other sources say the cause of her death is unknown. She was the only daughter of Jackson's longtime wife, Edwina Jackson.
A Democrat, Jackson opted not to seek an unprecedented fifth term last year. He was succeeded into office by current mayor Justin M. Bibb, Cleveland's fourth Black mayor behind Jackson, its third Black mayor and a Democrat like Bibb, 35, and the city's second youngest mayor.
Frank Q Jackson was shot multiple times at a home in the Kinsman neighborhood on the city's largely Black east side on Sept 19, 2021. Police were called to the shooting near Sidaway and East 70th St. in the Garden Valley projects at around 9 p.m.
A woman witness told police she dropped the younger Jackson off at the house to pick up his dirt bike when she heard multiple shots. She immediately left the scene and called 911.
He was shot seven times—in the head, back, right arm and his left side The older Jackson, who was mayor at the time, was escorted by police into and out of the home where the shooting incident occurred and was on the scene for much of the night as were then Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams and Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, Griffin now president of the 17-member all Democratic city council. Williams has since retired and Mayor Bibb has appointed Wayne Drummond, a 33-year veteran of the police force who stepped up as interim police chief, to replace him as chief.
The former mayor's grandson was in the news multiple times in the months leading up to his murder. His suspicious murder came three days after arson charges were filed against a man who was accused of setting fire to a car seen speeding away after the 2019 fatal shooting of Antonio Parra.
Cleveland police officers went to the former mayor’s house the night of that shooting of Parra occurred in search of Frank Q. Jackson after learning that the car at issue was registered to the mayor's grandson.
Frank Q. Jackson allegedly told police that he was not driving the car when the arson and fatal shooting occurred and had sold the car. Arson charges against a suspect in that case, which remains under investigation, have since been dropped
Also, the grandson, whom the former mayor helped to raise, was charged with domestic violence following an argument with his girlfriend back in 2020 and was later charged with felonious assault on a police officer and failure to comply with a police officer's order, a first and fourth degree felony respectively.
And he was already on probation relative to a plea deal before Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell that came following a 2019 indictment on felonious assault, abduction charges and two counts of failure to comply with police in which he was accused of punching and choking a young 18-year-old Black woman, and striking her with a metal truck hitch.
In that case he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor assault in exchange for dismissal of the felonious assault and other charges. In turn, Judge O'Donnell handed him a suspended 90 day sentence and put him on probation for 18 months.
In spite of his run-ins with the law, the former mayor's grandson was loved, Frank Jackson once telling reporters in response to the controversy surrounding his grandson that he loves his family just like others do.
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