Two teens sentenced for shooting at Tacoma Mall Transit Station

A pair of 17-year-olds have been sentenced for a shootout that seriously wounded another teenager in March at the Tacoma Mall Transit Station.

Antione Lamond Jerome Trent was sentenced Thursday to 8 and a half years after he pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count of first-degree assault, as part of negotiations with Pierce County prosecutors.

Isaac Bernard Miller got just under five years, eight months in October after he pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree assault, also as part of a plea deal.

Court records give this account of the shooting:

Miller, 16 at the time, was at the transit station with a 17-year-old friend the afternoon of March 5 when Trent arrived on a bus.

Surveillance video showed Miller and the 17-year-old engage Trent (also then 16) a few times. Eventually the 17-year-old punched Trent, and the two boys started to brawl.

At some point Trent shot the 17-year-old in the stomach from 5 feet away, and Miller and the 17-year-old fled. As they ran, Miller pulled out a gun and fired at Trent.

Maria Price, the mother of the wounded 17-year-old, wrote the court that her son had gone through more than 30 surgeries, and has struggled with depression since the shooting.

“ … as a mother I wonder why over a stupid fight you have to pull a gun on my baby,” she wrote. “I have never seen anything so stupid in my life.”

No one else was hit, which Deputy Prosecutor Jesse Williams noted was very lucky.

Williams wrote that Miller “may not have been looking for trouble that day, but when trouble found him, he chose to react in a manner that endangered anyone passing by the busy thoroughfare adjacent to the mall where the shootings occurred.”

As for Trent, loved ones wrote the court that he’s the oldest of four children, and that he helps care for his siblings. His adolescence has been tough, they said, because of bullying at school and a father who has not been receptive to a relationship with him.

The family wrote that Trent has been devastated about the effect a conviction might have on his chances of a career in medicine or education.

“Allow him another chance at life, to be the young man that I know he’s destined to be,” wrote his aunt, Ta-Jon Trent. “I believe Antione has learned and (appreciates) the consequences of making bad decisions.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2016 at 1:11 PM with the headline "Two teens sentenced for shooting at Tacoma Mall Transit Station."