Chris Helms
File Photo: Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley, left, at an Aug. 25, 2014 press conference at Boston Police Headquarters.
Two men admitted their roles in shooting 14-year-old Jaewon Martin on a Jackson Square basketball court in 2010, Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley announced Thursday.
Timothy Hearns and Ramon Silvelo-Miles, both 24, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the May 8, 2010 killing of Martin. Hearns, who said he pulled the trigger, was sentenced to at least 31 years in prison plus five years of probation. Silvelo-Miles, who went to the Bromley-Heath basketball court with Hearns, was sentenced to at least nine years in prison plus three years of probation.
Prosecutors said Hearns and Silvelo-Miles, members of the H-Block gang, went to Bromley-Heath looking to shoot members of the Heath Street gang. Hearns fired a revolver multiple times, striking Martin and grazing a 15-year-old boy. Two girls were also on the court at the time, though neither was injured.
Hearns and Silvelo-Miles had been facing first-degree murder charges. Prosecutors said they chose to accept the manslaughter pleas because the two would have been tried separately and could have pointed the finger at one another in front of separate juries.
The Herald reported that the gun law recently signed by Gov. Deval Patrick would have kept Hearns behind bars, preventing him from firing the shots that killed Martin.
Martin was an eighth-grade honor student at the Timilty School in Roxbury, according to an obituary posted on the web site of State Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz, D-Jamaica Plain.
For more on the case from the District Attorney's perspective, including what Martin's mother said to the men in court in her victim impact statement, please read the full press release.