Guilty plea in murder of 16-year-old near Woodbridge High School
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Version 0 of 1. The accused ringleader in a plot that led to a 16-year-old’s death pleaded guilty to first-degree murder on Monday. Kawain Tyrell Smalls admitted to killing Brenden Wilson, a Woodbridge High School student fatally shot on a path near the school, Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert said on Monday. Ebert said that Smalls, who will be sentenced in March, faces a prison term of at least 20 years. Ebert said that his office would ask for a sentence longer than 50 years. He said Smalls and the four other people charged with associated crimes, including one other adult and three juveniles, lured Wilson to the path that day by telling him that they wanted to buy drugs from him. They planned instead to rob him. Ebert said that Wilson brought a BB gun to the encounter, and Smalls brought a more powerful weapon. Smalls ended up shooting Wilson multiple times. “When you get involved in the drug culture, anything can happen, including this,” Ebert said on Monday. At the time of his death in November 2014, Wilson’s family said that he was an honor roll student and Junior ROTC cadet who started using marijuana to cope with his depression because he had been bullied. “He was dying on the inside,” his mother Vikki Moore said. “He was hurting. He hid a lot of his pain.” She said, “I want to hold him one last time. I want justice served.” |