The mother of Joshua Boyd looked her son's killer in the eye Friday and forgave him - but also said she'll never forget.
"Colt, I wish you no harm. I forgive you for what you've done. But I will never forget it," Sherry Boyd told Stephen Colton Kratzer at his 3rd District Court sentencing.Kratzer admitted shooting Joshua Boyd, 17, on March 1 but maintains the gun he was pointing at Boyd's head went off accidentally when he was backing up and bumped his hand as Boyd came toward him.
Charged with first-degree felony murder, Kratzer, 18, pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to two second-degree felonies, manslaughter and burglary, in the incident.
Events began that night when Kratzer returned to find his Glendale house, with his mother in it, had been hit by eight gunshots. That culminated a long series of violent, gang-related events aimed at Kratzer, according to defense attorney David Boun.
Kratzer went looking for the man he thought was responsible, Boun said, comparing his client to a "field mouse put in a corner," turning on his tormentors.
Prosecutor Blake Nakamura said Kratzer went to a house at 1100 S. 1100 West in Salt Lake City, thinking the shooter would be there. Instead, he found Boyd and several other people, including children.
They fled into a bedroom, Nakamura said, with Kratzer behind them demanding to know where the man was he sought. When Boyd denied knowing, Kratzer shot him in the head because he thought he was lying, Nakamura said.
And, bent on more vengeance, Kratzer an hour later fired at another house in the same area in a drive-by shooting, Nakamura said: "His intent on that evening was to get somebody, to kill somebody."
Bullets recovered from that shooting match the one that killed Boyd, and ballistics tests show they were fired from a gun found the next morning in Kratzer's car, Nakamura said.
Nakamura called the incident "needless, senseless and without any rational explanation."
Kratzer still maintains the shooting was accidental, telling Boyd's family at the sentencing that "his death was never intended to hap-pen."
Kratzer at one point during the confrontation seemed to calm down and put the gun down to his side, Nakamura said, but then raised it again, pointed it at Boyd's head "and said, `You better not be lying' and then, bang, Joshua was shot in the head.
"He killed Joshua Boyd because he thought he was lying. It was not an accident, it was not a mistake," Nakamura told Judge Ann Stirba.
Nakamura maintains Kratzer is a gang member, although Kratzer denies it, telling the judge the incident is an example of the magnitude of Salt Lake's gang problem.
"The person you are sentencing is not the person his family, his friends and his neighbors know. The person you are sentencing is the person his homies know," Nakamura said.
Stirba appeared to agree.
"Clearly what's happened here evolved from an interval of escalating violence. It got worse, and worse and worse. Now one young man is dead and another is looking at many years in prison," Stirba said.
"The community cannot tolerate vigilantism and the random use of guns," the judge said.
She sentenced Kratzer to two one-to-15-year prison terms, to run concurrently, and added a one-to-five-year gun enhancement term, to run consecutively to the first two terms.
Stirba said she wants to send a message that gang violence is not acceptable to the community but balance it with giving Kratzer some hope of getting out of prison before he turns middle age.