He shot recklessly and killed a bystander, 18. On Wednesday, he learned his sentence
Jacob Dawson’s friends have surrounded his mother and younger sister with support since his death.
His mother, Jennifer Carr, said watching them grow up, graduate, get jobs and homes, and become parents has been a blessing.
It’s also “a very painful reminder of what was stolen from me and what I will never experience with my son,” she said in court Wednesday.
Riley Keith Emmett, 20, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Pierce County Superior Court for Dawson’s death.
Judge Jennifer Andrews sentenced him to nine and a half years, which is the mid-range term the attorneys agreed to recommend.
Dawson, 18, was shot after one of his friends got into a fight Nov. 24, 2019 at a Parkland park, according to court records. He sent a Snapchat video of himself to his friends after he’d been shot, asking for help, and called 911. He was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center and died from his injuries.
Charging papers said Dawson was not involved in the fight at Mayfair Playfield, 13510 13th Ave. Ct. E. He was standing by his car.
Carr told the court about the grief and heartache of losing her son.
“Unless you’re that parent, then you truly have no idea,” she said. “I feel like a piece of me is missing.”
She described how she thinks of Dawson constantly, and how it’s not only the milestones that she’s missing.
“I will never get over the way he said ‘Mom’ 100 times in a row just to get my attention,” she told the court.
Carr also explained how her daughter has been affected. She doesn’t “get the bubbly, free-spirited, optimistic mom she deserves,” Carr told the judge. “She’ll never have the protection and the safety of her big brother again.”
She asked the court to consider if there was a way to give Emmett the maximum.
“You can never replace what was taken from us,” Carr said.
She told The News Tribune last year that Dawson “was very, very loyal and very protective of me and his sister.”
Losing him, she said, had “been the worst experience of my life.”
Dawson wanted to be a mechanic, like his father, who they lost when he was young.
He was also a talented Fortnite player, placing second in a tournament at one point.
“If the internet went off in my house for 30 seconds, I knew,” Carr joked.
She said her son was very funny, and that he had a dry sense of humor.
Havyn Lewis, a friend who met Dawson in third grade, said the same.
“Just a super-funny person,” Lewis told The News Tribune after the shooting. “He could make me laugh until I cried.”
He described Dawson as a loyal friend and as his go-to person for everything.
“Man, he had the best heart ever, you know,” Lewis said. “He could make the room just light up.”
Lewis described Dawson as “really level headed” and said that “he genuinely cared for people.”
He kept others out of trouble, Lewis said.
‘Reckless conduct’
Defense attorney Bryan Hershman told the court his client would have had a valid self-defense claim under the law if he’d gone to trial.
The attorney said his client saw someone draw a gun, that he fled, made an effort to fend them off and that he didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
“The young man who is deceased had nothing to do with it,” Hershman told the court. “He was just there.”
Charging papers said there was a fistfight at the park, then Emmett arrived and someone confronted him about a different fight. Then someone handed Emmett a gun and he ran backward, shooting over his shoulder, charging papers said.
That’s the definition of first-degree manslaughter, Hershman told the court.
“It is reckless conduct,” he said.
Hershman explained that an opposing group of youths made threats against an acquaintance of his client, and the opposing groups agreed “to meet and settle the score.”
He said his client didn’t bring a gun to the park, but that someone handed it to his client before a fight ensued.
The attorney also noted his client’s house had been shot in the past and that he had been threatened.
“This young man was a good young man,” Hershman told the judge. “He actually had very little to do with what happened on the day in question.”
The attorney said he thinks “the only thing worse than losing your son would be losing your son to a remorseless killer ... and that’s just not the case.”
Emmett apologized when it was his turn to address the court.
“What I did cannot be taken back,” he said.
He spoke about using the time he’s incarcerated for “constructive self development” and “trying to move on in the best possible way.”
He said what happened was tragic and that it “never should have transpired the way it has.”
Before she handed down the sentence, Judge Andrews noted the many people in the courtroom gallery who loved Dawson, and how his loss has “irrevocably” affected his mother and sister.
What happened to him is every parent’s worst fear, the judge said.
If giving Emmett a maximum sentence would bring Dawson back, she told him: “I would do it in a second, and from what you said, it sounds like you would maybe voluntarily do that.”
But there are processes and laws in place that set out appropriate punishments under the law, Andrews explained.
Sometimes that’s different, the judge said, than appropriate punishments in our hearts and minds.
Then she adopted the sentence recommended by the attorneys.
“When you get out, you will still be a young man,” Andrews told Emmett. “I hope that you do take this with you and that this changes you.”
She told him to put in double the effort in everything he does to “be successful and make your life worth something.”
