14-Year-Old Boy Charged with Murder After Killing a Girl He Thought He'd Gotten Pregnant.
A 14-year-old Ohio boy is going to spend what the streets call "juvie life" in jail for the murder of a classmate.
Isiah Lynch pleaded true — the juvenile equivalent of guilty —Wednesday to a murder charge for the March fatal shooting of 14-year-old Sylvia McGee.
Lynch was 13 at the time of McGee’s death.
Following a plea hearing in juvenile court, Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Cordova said Lynch told police he believed McGee was pregnant.
Cordova says that the pregnancy rumor is what lead to Lynch murdering McGee. Several students at their school had been circulating the rumor and Lynch feared he may be the father of McGee's baby. A rumor that was, in fact, not true.
Lynch met up with McGee in the wee hours of the morning on March 30th and shot her in the head.
A co-defendant, Michael J. Boykins, 14, recently pleaded true to tampering with evidence. A complicity to aggravated murder charge had been reduced.
Under his own plea agreement, Boykins will serve a minimum of one year in youth prison but could remain there until age 21 depending on his behavior, Cordova said.
Lynch, Boykins and McGee had known each other since attending elementary school in Canton, Cordova said, and had reconnected following their middle school years.
Investigators believe Lynch shot McGee with a .38-caliber, semi-automatic handgun, Cordova said. Boykins witnessed the slaying but was not armed and did not fire any shots, she said.
The murder weapon was not recovered.
Both Lynch and Boykins could potentially be incarcerated until the age of 21. McGee's family members feel that the potential sentences are too short.
"I definitely feel like he should be tried as an adult,” Carlina Hanley, McGee’s great aunt, said. “He’s done an adult crime, he took a life, a life that we can’t have back.”
Boykins is set to be sentenced on December 2nd and Lynch will stand before the judge, and McGee's family, again on January 7, 2020 for his sentencing.
