Damon Holmes was only 15 years old when he shot a cab driver in the head during a robbery.
On Friday in Baltimore City Circuit Court, the diminutive Holmes, now 16, watched as the driver?s family cried and grieved ? before the teen was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
“I apologize for what I did,” Holmes said, turning to the family of victim Oumar Bah, 28, of Silver Spring. “If you could forgive me, it would be good.”
Moments earlier, Bah?s fiancee, Nana Kufuor, told Judge Lynn Stewart of the pain she has endured since Bah?s May 31, 2006 shooting.
“He would have given [Holmes] the money if he could have,” Kufuor said. “There has to be some sort of deterrence to keep him from doing this again.”
Bah was shot in the 7100 block of McClean Boulevard after picking up Holmes in his cab. According to charging documents, Holmes shot Bah once in the head, robbed him, and then confessed to the crime. Holmes had been released from a juvenile facility only a week earlier, police said.
After Bah?s death, his fiancee and her mother, Mamma Kufuor, traveled to West Africa to visit Bah?s parents, who live in Mali.
“If it had been a car crash, they could understand, but he was shot in the head like a dog,” Mamma Kufuor said.
Holmes? attorney, Assistant Public Defender Ilene Frame, called his upraising “completely broken.”
“Unfortunately, Damon Holmes didn?t come from a loving family,” she said, adding that IQ tests he took ranged from scores of 68 to 75. “He obviously didn?t do well in school.”
She said he admitted his guilt in the crime, but said the actual shooting was an “accident.”
“He?s not standing here denying what happened.”
Stewart sentenced Holmes to serve his time in Jessup at the Patuxent Institution for youthful offenders, which stresses rehabilitation. Because Holmes? crime is violent in nature, he will not be eligible for parole until he has served at least half his sentence.
