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Five men sentenced in Suni Bell murder case
FOX 13's Aaron Mesmer was in the courtroom as the family shared emotional testimony at Wednesday's sentencing.
TAMPA, Fla. - The five men who were convicted of killing 4-year-old Suni Bell were sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday morning.
Zvante Sampson, Jaylin Bedward, James Denson, Quandarious Hammond and Andrew Thompson were convicted in September in the 2021 killing of Suni Bell. The verdict carries an automatic life sentence for each of the men.
The backstory:
The state said the 4-year-old girl and her family were coming back from a celebration of life for a family member who had died, and they were headed to a get-together following the event that night in August 2021.
Prosecutors said Suni's uncle, Willy Brown, was driving the car and her mother, Mary Harrison, was in the passenger's seat. They couldn't find the location of the get-together, so they pulled off into a field to figure out the directions.
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Prosecutors said Sampson, Bedward, Denson, Thompson and Hammond were among a group that was hanging out at a nearby Chevron gas station, and they started watching the car that the family was in.
Pictured: Suni Bell.
The group was seen gathering outside the gas station on surveillance footage.
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Prosecutors said some of the men masked their faces and several grabbed guns, before getting into several cars and following the car that Suni and her family were in. Surveillance footage appears to show the cars following their car and ambushing them with about 40 bullets.
Suni's mother and uncle survived, but the child later died at the hospital.
What they're saying:
Suni's family members spoke to reporters after the hearing, saying the sentencing was a long time coming.
"With the sentence, we could breathe. We could breathe. We can smile. Some days was harder than others, but being that she's not here, I know God has her. And I know she's in a better place. She's watching over us," said Drian Bell, Suni's grandmother. "[The defendants] deserved it because, hadn't they known if the baby was in the car, I don't think that would have done it. But still, when you do stuff not thinking senseless, this is the outcome."
"Four years is a long [time], and I'm glad that I got justice," said Harrison, adding she hopes the men who killed her daughter learn from this. "I just want them to do better. They got kids as well. I just wanted them to be able to teach their kids to put the guns down and get a book, get a Bible, pray."
Judge Robin Fuson, meanwhile, had some harsh words for the five men.
"You don't get to do what you do and what you did and walk amongst us. So for the actions, this is what you earned. Nobody put you in prison, you put yourselves there," Fuson said.
The Source: This article was written with information from the sentencing trial of the five men convicted of killing Suni Bell and previous FOX 13 News reports.