Donnell is the uncle of a Chicago teen who fatally shot another Chicago teen (both reportedly being 14 year old girls) in what has been described as a “Facebook feud” over a boy.
Donnell was found guilty of charges which included first degree murder in the April 28, 2014, slaying of 14 year old Endia Martin (pictured below), and on Monday, March 21st, 2016 he was sentenced to serve 100 years in prison.
Donnell not only provided his niece with the gun that was used in the fatal shooting but he also accompanied his niece to the shooting scene (as an aside Donnell happens to be paralyzed from the waist down from an unrelated shooting incident which occurred in 2010). Donnell claimed that he was simply trying to protect his niece when he gave her the weapon. Donnell’s unnamed niece has been charged as a juvenile. Prosecutors allege that she had gone to the shooting scene to confront “her rival”, Lanekia Reynolds, who was both Endia Martin’s best friend and the person who had reportedly posted death threats to Donnell’s niece on Facebook. Donnell said that he had seen the messages and thought that the threat was serious enough that he needed to take a gun with him. Donnell apologized for doing so at his sentencing. But Judge Thaddeus Wilson wasn’t impressed, stating that: “There are no excuses or rationalization for giving a child a gun to take to ridiculous fight about a boy.”
Lanekia Reynolds testified that she and Donnell’s niece had “agreed” on Facebook to a fight after school in April 2014, but what was planned as a “fist fight” escalated into a fatal tragedy (which should be no surprise as “the Chicago way” dictates that you always one-up your opponent)…
Donnell may have spent his first 27 years as a Chicago resident but he will now spend his next 100 in the suburbs, as a Joliet resident.
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