On April 8, 2022, Summer Robinette, a 20-year-old female, was killed inside the Welch, West Virginia home she shared with her boyfriend on Stewart Street. Public reports say she was 23 weeks pregnant, and the shooting also caused the death of her unborn child. The case carried an added layer of heartbreak because Robinette was a mother, and early coverage described a young child being in the home when police responded.
Officers arrived at the residence, found Robinette dead at the scene, and recovered a weapon from the house.
Police identified her boyfriend, Jhamel Scott Jr. of Welch, as the suspect. He was arrested on April 8, 2022, at the home and initially charged with first-degree murder. Later reporting said the case expanded into two counts of first-degree murder because Robinette’s unborn child also died in the shooting. As the case moved forward, Scott maintained that the gun had discharged accidentally while he was taking a. 357-caliber revolver from a gun safe in a bedroom closet, claiming he slipped and the weapon fired as Robinette sat on the bed nearby.
When the case finally reached a jury in McDowell County, prosecutors pursued the deaths as a double murder, but the trial ended on a lesser verdict. After about three hours of deliberation, jurors convicted Scott of two counts of involuntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder. Reports noted that involuntary manslaughter in West Virginia is a misdemeanor offense, and coverage at the time emphasized that the final conviction was far less severe than the original charges filed after Robinette’s death.
The arc of the case left behind a story that began with a fatal shooting inside a shared home and ended with a conviction that many readers saw as dramatically different from the accusations first announced after the arrest. Robinette’s death, along with the loss of her unborn child, remained at the center of every stage of the case, from the first reports out of Welch to the courtroom proceedings that followed more than a year later.
