Fresno man who played with gun, killed friend sentenced. What the victim’s family said
.jpeg "Irie Tucker and his daughter Trinity Rose")
Shennewa Dean, who lost her son, Irie Tucker, to gun violence last year, spoke tearfully Thursday to the man responsible for taking his life, Savon Lollie.
Lollie, 22, pleaded no contest in October to voluntary manslaughter for fatally shooting Tucker, 20. He claims it was an accident.
Lollie was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday by Judge Michael Idiart. But not before hearing from the victim’s family members.
“I am not mad at this young man, and I don’t hold any ill will against him,” Dean said, appearing at the hearing via Zoom. “And if this was truly an accident I forgive him. I just hope he learns from it and forgives himself. Go mentor somebody, go do something about the stupidity of playing with guns and the lives it can end.”
Police said Lollie and Tucker were at a party in southwest Fresno on May 12, 2019 when Lollie and another man began playing with two handguns they thought were empty. They weren’t. The gun Lollie was holding, a .45 caliber Springfield, still had a bullet in the chamber and when he squeezed the trigger it fired, striking Tucker in the shoulder.
Tucker died at the hospital.
Lollie offered his apologies to the victim’s family.
“I know that I can never bring him back or make it right, I understand that,” he said. “And I want you to know I do apologize for that and I realize what happened. I took away a son from his mother, a father from his daughter, you feel me, a brother from his sister and I feel that.”
Tucker’s death was devastating for the tight-knit family. Dean said she was still mourning the recent loss of her grandfather and her father when Tucker was shot and killed.
“I was just numb,” she said. “I had to turn off my emotions because otherwise I would have lost my mind.”
Tucker’s sister Monae Lewis doesn’t believe the family received justice for her brother’s death.
“We have a lifelong heartache that we have to live with,” she said. “He is not only guilty of shooting my brother but of breaking our hearts and ruining lives that have no connection to him.”
Lewis will remember her brother, one of five children, as the adventurer of the family. He loved being outside riding his skateboard or fishing in the river. Tucker attended Hoover High School and McLane High School.
“My mom tried to keep him away from the other side of town,” Lewis said. “He was not street rugged. He was so calm and always understanding.”
Tucker had a two-year-old daughter, Trinity Rose, and he was engaged to his child’s mother. He enjoyed construction and worked at Cen Cal General Construction, she said.
He also had plans to be a community activist like his grandfather, Marvin Dean of Bakersfield, who died in 2018. Dean was known as an advocate for people of color in business in business, especially construction.
“Irie loved building things and wanted to be a carpenter, he built us birdhouses all kinds of stuff,” Lewis said. “My brother’s death wasn’t a gang loss. This is different, he was different.”
Lollie was represented by defense attorney Arthur Hampar and prosecuted by Tim Galstan.
