NEW JERSEY: Sad, sad story – con returns home after serving 30 years only to kill his mother. In October 2014, Steven Pratt was ready to begin his life anew. He had served out a thirty year prison sentence and had gone home to Atlantic City, where his family held a party to welcome him home. Pratt was only 15 when he got into an argument with a next door that he subsequently shot and killed later the same day. Pratt was tried as an adult for murder and began serving his sentence at a maximum security prison. Thirty years later Pratt was 45 when he got out and returned to the neighborhood where his 64-year-old mother resided. Neighbors maintained that Gwendolyn Pratt was “kind and always impeccably dressed.” She took a 6 am bus to work each day. On the Sunday morning after Pratt’s release, police found Gwendolyn dead from blunt force injuries to the head. Pratt was charged, and at his initial court appearance, he allegedly wept. No one has guessed that his mother would lose her life less than two full days after her son was granted his freedom. The outcome? Pratt pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Could this be the culmination of a juvenile destroyed by adult incarceration???
OHIO: Irony at its best maybe… The owner of a gun shop was shot dead in mid-June 2016, when a student attending a firearms-safety class accidentally discharged his weapon and hi shot went through the wall into the next room. James Baker, 64, died at the scene, the KayJay Gun Shop in the town of Amelia. The County Sheriff said that Baker was in a room adjacent to the one where the “concealed-carry class” with 10 students was taking place. One of the participants fired his gun while practicing “weapons-malfunction drills. A neighbor told WCPO-TV in Cincinnati that Baker had spent his life teaching others how to protect themselves. Irony at its best!
