Anthony Jones, his eyes welling with tears, his voice shaking, received an eight-year prison sentence Thursday for providing the shotgun and driving the getaway car used in a 2005 Westminster murder.
“I?m not disputing my role in this whole ordeal,” said Jones, 25. “But I also lost a lot. The person killed was my best friend?s brother. We were close for years.”
Carroll County Circuit Court Judge Barry Hughes sentenced Jones, of Westminster, to 15 years with all but eight suspended for conspiracy to commit armed robbery and five years, to be served concurrently, for acting as an accessory to murder.
He also must serve five years? supervised probation.
The sentence was part of a plea deal Anthony Jones received for testifying in May against his cousin Shawn Jones, 29, of Westminster, in exchange for avoiding a murder charge.
Testifying “was the hardest decision I ever had to make,” Anthony Jones said. “I have never been in this kind of trouble before.”
As he waited for his sentence, he sat between his parents, Anthony and Evelyn. His fiancée, Stephanie Crown, rubbed his shoulders and cried.
A jury convicted Shawn Jones of first-degree murder in the Dec. 7, 2005, shooting death of Donnie Bowman, 43, of Westminster and wounding of Lamont Dew, 39, of Baltimore, after Dew sold Shawn Jones some bad cocaine.
Bowman?s sisters took the stand Thursday to express their outrage and sorrow.
“I not only lost my brother, I lost my mother, Edna, who died March 2 because her heart gave out fromtoo much stress,” Westminster resident Ruth Bowman said.
“I get to look at grave sites,” said Phyllis Cook, of Westminster, another of Bowman?s sisters.
After the slaying, Anthony Jones drove his cousin to Pennsylvania and waited two days before telling the police the truth, state Prosecutor Allan Culver said.
