In the warm, early morning hours of June 9, 2010, in Knoxville, Tennessee, 17-year-old DaChanna Deshay Dotson was on the front porch of her grandmother's home on Porter Avenue, trying to soothe her fussy 8-month-old nephew. Moments that should have been filled with quiet tenderness were shattered by a sudden hail of bullets. DaChanna, a promising student with dreams of becoming a pediatrician, acted instinctively, grabbing the infant and running for the safety of the house.
Though she managed to get her nephew inside unharmed, a bullet struck her in the side, and she collapsed in the hallway. She was later pronounced dead at the University of Tennessee Medical Center.
The investigation quickly revealed that DaChanna was not the intended target of the violent outburst. The bullets were meant for a neighbor, Antonio Miller, a convicted drug dealer who had been involved in an argument earlier that night and had sought refuge on the Dotson's porch as the shooting began. Knoxville Police identified two suspects, Samuel Lamar Glass, 25, and Akeem Deshawn Dubose, 21. Both men were already in jail on probation violations when a grand jury indicted them on first-degree murder charges in connection with DaChanna's death.
The legal proceedings that followed brought a measure of justice for DaChanna's grieving family. Akeem Deshawn Dubose, who drove the car that night, accepted a plea deal for facilitation of murder. In exchange for his testimony against Glass, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. During his hearing, Dubose offered an apology to DaChanna's family, expressing his regret for the tragic events. Samuel Lamar Glass, the man who fired the AK-47 that ended DaChanna's life, was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder, felony murder, and attempted murder. The trial revealed that Glass had intended to shoot Miller after their earlier dispute. DaChanna's grandmothers, who had raised her after her parents' deaths, sat through the trials, finding some solace in the sentences handed down.
