The mother of a 10-year-old child who shot and killed her neighbor during an argument was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.
Lakrisha Isaac, 33, was convicted on charges of manslaughter and culpable negligence in the May 2022 killing of 41-year-old Lashun Rodgers, amid complaints from Rodgers’ family that the sentences were too light.
The Memorial Day shooting stemmed from a post Rodgers made on social media, according to an arrest affidavit. Isaac confronted Rodgers about the post at the apartment complex on Mercy Drive where the two lived.
Isaac passed her backpack, containing a loaded gun, to his daughter, then 10 years old. A fight broke out between the two women, with neighbors saying Isaac threw the first punch. The child finally took the gun out of his backpack and shot Rodgers twice, hitting her in the head, before shouting “She shouldn’t have hit my mom.”
Isaac and his daughter went back inside the apartment while Rodgers lay bleeding on the floor. Neighbors called emergency personnel, who transported Rodgers to the hospital, where she died from her injuries.
The sentence comes amid a national debate over the prosecution of parents of minors involved in firearms crimes. The most prominent case was that of 15-year-old Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley, whose parents were convicted of manslaughter in separate cases.
Several members of Rodgers’ family spoke through tears during the hearing.
“My smile, my real laugh, my daily routine is gone,” said Ashia Johnson, the victim’s daughter. “Then all of a sudden, taken by someone for nothing, someone we gave food and popsicles to outside the house.”
“Just know that if I had been there, the circumstances would have been different,” she said.
The terms of the sentence were agreed to in a May plea deal with prosecutors. The victim’s sister, Sharetta Rodgers, said the plea deal did not satisfy her.
“The slap on the wrist and the pat on the back that the court gave you today is not right,” she said. “It is not right to take a life and it is not justified. And that’s not justice for Lashun Rodgers.”
The victim’s mother, Laura Chambliss, told how she saw and spoke to her daughter the same day as the shooting.
“I got my last call from Lashun, telling me, once again, that she loved me,” she said. “Hours later I received a call. ‘IN. Laura, they killed Lashun.’”
She said she could forgive Isaac and his daughter, but she would never forget.
Isaac did not speak on his behalf during the hearing.
The judge gave Isaac 128 days in prison. She will also have to serve three years of probation, take a four-hour parenting course and seek evaluation and treatment for substance abuse.
