The man who supplied his brother with the gun that killed an 8-year-old girl last year in Northeast Washington was sentenced yesterday to a 20-year prison term, nearly as much time as his brother was given.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Ann O'Regan Keary told Ricardo Hall, 24, that he had played a key role in the killing even though it was his younger brother who fired the gun that killed Chelsea Cromartie on May 3 as she watched television in her aunt's home.
"You do not have a minimal role in this," she said. "You are very much involved. . . . Without your conduct, of course, we would not have that tragic outcome."
Hall, who had never before been in trouble with the law, was working for the Maryland park system and living on his own in the District when his brother, Raashed, called to say that he had been attacked and needed a gun.
Instead of trying to calm his brother down, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles W. Cobb said yesterday in court, Ricardo Hall brought a gun and joined in looking for the people involved in a violent dispute with Raashed Hall and his girlfriend outside a carryout restaurant on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE.
The brothers found one of the people they were seeking on the porch of a home in the 800 block of 52nd Street NE. After circling the block a few times, Raashed Hall opened fire, prosecutors said. No one on the porch was hit, but the bullets crashed into the living room, striking Chelsea, who died, and her aunt, who survived.
Arrested about a week later, the men confessed to police, and in early August, they pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Raashed Hall, 22, pleaded guilty to an additional charge of assault.
Attorney Danny Onorato had urged Keary to give Ricardo Hall a sentence at the low end of the guidelines, which call for 12 to 24 years. Onorato, a former prosecutor, said he had never met a defendant as remorseful as Hall and asked for significantly less time than the 23-year sentence his brother received Jan. 14.
As his brother had, Ricardo Hall rose and asked for the mercy of the court, apologizing to Chelsea's family and saying he was prepared to face his punishment.
But Keary, while acknowledging Hall's remorse and his willingness to plead guilty early on, said she ultimately had to judge Hall on his actions that day.
"It cannot erase what you did, and I think you know that," the judge declared.
