Tacoma man fatally shot in ‘argument about nothing.’ His killer is now sentenced
A 19-year-old Tacoma man was sentenced Monday to 10 years, six months in prison for shooting an unarmed 59-year-old man eight times, killing him during a petty argument outside a convenience store.
In Pierce County Superior Court on Monday, the defendant, Chase Andrew Wilcox, sat quietly in a gray and pink jail uniform after pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter for the Oct. 31, 2024 shooting of Ricktor Murphy.
Wilcox mostly stared at the defense desk while Murphy’s loved ones lambasted him for taking the life of a man his daughter described as the glue that held their family together.
Murphy worked in sanitation as a contractor for Pierce County, relatives said. His girlfriend, Danielle Johnson, said at the time of his death he was expecting to become a City of Tacoma employee in what she described as a promotion.
Relatives and Murphy’s girlfriend spoke tearfully about the graduations, births and basketball games Murphy would now miss, how they could always count on him as a mentor and protector and how his death had left them broken and still grieving. Each called for a maximum sentence.
“He shot basketballs, not guns,” Murphy’s cousin, Regina Alexander said.
“Through basketball and sports, he taught more than just plays and drills,” Alexander said. “He taught discipline, confidence, respect and how to carry yourself in life. Young people looked up to him because he saw their potential, even when they couldn’t see it in themselves.”
None of Murphy’s relatives spoke more forcefully than his mother, Alicia Cross. She said she could not imagine why Wilcox would have been driving around with a gun at his age and blamed his parents for allowing their child to “slaughter” her son. Banging her fist on the witness table, she yelled that Wilcox needed to be locked up.
Cross, 75, said she believed Wilcox had been planning to shoot the first person who made him mad.
“Let me tell you something, you can’t get no madder than me,” Cross yelled.
Cross began to break down as she was helped to walk away from the witness table, crying in anguish and shouting, “This man killed my baby,” and “I want my baby back,” as she was escorted out of the room.
It was then the defense’s turn to articulate how long Wilcox should spend in prison, and his lawyer, Bryan Hershman, a veteran Tacoma defense attorney, said he wasn’t sure what to say.
Hershman then explained that Wilcox had made the wrong choice, and he believed — rightly or wrongly — that Murphy had said something threatening on the day of the shooting. Wilcox he reacted as an 18-year-old and made a “terrible decision,” the attorney said.
Up until the day in question, Hershman said, Wilcox had been a good kid. He played sports, graduated high school and worked at a warehouse.
“If I could somehow enucleate the day in question, I submit that this young man is everything both sides of the courtroom would want in this community,” Hershman said. “What in the world he was doing at that moment, at that date and time is quite another story.”
Hersman did not put forth a specific sentencing recommendation in his remarks, but he told Judge Susan Adams the courts commanded her to take into account his client’s youthfulness. He also noted that although he was not arguing an unproven claim of self-defense, Adams could consider whether, short of self-defense, did Wilcox believe he or a family member was in peril.
Earlier in the hearing, deputy prosecuting attorney Sunni Ko laid out the facts of Murphy’s death, explaining how his normal trip to his neighborhood 7-Eleven off South 56th Street had led to an “argument about nothing” that became deadly in minutes.
After buying some nachos, Murphy left the store and saw a vehicle pulling in a little too quickly, Ko said. The driver was Wilcox, and he was there with his mother and girlfriend.
Murphy made a comment that Ko said must have been about how quickly Murphy pulled in, but she said his comment was so inconsequential that no one recalls his specific words.
Wilcox was so upset by the comment, Ko said, that surveillance video showed his girlfriend and mother trying to subdue him, but they were unable to do so. Instead Wilcox retrieved a handgun he was not legally allowed to possess due to his age and fired it eight times, striking Murphy five times in the face, torso and arm.
Wilcox then fled along with his mother and girlfriend. Ko said video showed the young man fire at Murphy one more time.
“This is how Danielle, his fiance, and Ricktor’s daughter found the victim laying in the parking lot, cold and wet in the October rain, his body riddled with bullets,” Ko said.
Agonized cries could be heard in the courtroom gallery as Ko described the gruesome scene.
In the days that followed, Ko said, neither Wilcox nor any of his family members called the police. Instead, she said, they called an attorney and waited for the police to come find him. The gun used in the shooting was never recovered.
Hershman said during the hearing that plans were being made to turn Wilcox in but it didn’t happen. “That’s not a good thing,” Hershman said.
At the end of the hearing, Wilcox said he was “really sorry” for everything that happened.
“I didn’t want it to ever play out like that,” Wilcox said. “I wanted us to both be able to go home and enjoy our lives. And I just really apologize.”
On Monday afternoon, one of Murphy’s daughters, Myaysia Murphy, wrote in an email to The News Tribune that she was grateful Adams “put her foot down” and imposed the high-end sentence, but she still felt it wasn’t enough time for Wilcox’s crime, and she didn’t find his apology to be genuine.
“Saying he’s deeply sorry and didn’t mean for it to play out like that but left my father Ricktor Murphy in cold blood dying that tragic night,” Myaysia Murphy said.
This story was originally published July 22, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
