An Ohio man convicted of murdering an expectant couple spat on a courtroom floor in front of their grieving families as he was led away on Wednesday.
David Calhoun, Jr, 26, had just been convicted of shooting dead Le’Shaun Sanders, 33, Sara Marsh, 32, and their unborn child in November 2016 when he showed his contempt for the court.
Moments before, Sanders’ sister, Patricia Jones, told the judge, according to the Record-Courier: ‘I want him to suffer. I want him to know I want him to suffer. I hope he dies in the worst way.’
David Calhoun, Jr (pictured), 26, pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder Wednesday. He spat on the floor rather than say anything as he was led away
Calhoun was given three life sentences for aggravated murder but spared death row after accepting a plea deal earlier this month.
He had previously been in prison – where he picked up the nickname ‘D-Block’ – and is believed to have shot Sanders dead in Ravenna Township over a long-standing dispute. The details of the dispute were unclear.
Marsh, who was 10 months pregnant with Sanders’ child at the time, had no previous history with Calhoun and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, cops said.
Le’Shaun Sanders, 33, and Sara Marsh, 32 (both pictured), were shot in November 2016 after Sanders got in a dispute with Calhoun. Marsh was pregnant with Sanders’ baby
Calhoun’s lawyers had little to say in his defense during the hearing in Portage County on Wednesday, and much of the time was spent listening to him being berated first by the families of his victims, and then by the judge.
Karen Marsh, Sara’s mother, said she had not slept properly in the year since her daughter was murdered.
‘She wasn’t a mean person. She was loved by a lot of people, so I don’t understand [why she had to die],’ she said.
‘I don’t understand, I just don’t understand this, to not know why.’
She added that Sara’s other children would now face lives of hardship without their mother’s love.
Her three-year-old son ‘will never know what his mom was like,’ she said.
‘She has a 6-year-old who will never remember the love her mom had for her. She has a 14-year-old son going through a lot of changes.
‘This has not only affected me but the children. Their lives are forever altered and we can’t explain to them why.’
Sara Marsh’s father, Larry, said that he hopes her killer will ‘rot in Hell,’ although ‘For this individual to spend the rest of his life in prison, that’s some consolation.’
Karen and Larry Marsh, Sara’s parents, watch emotionally as Calhoun is taken away. Karen told the court that Sara’s three surviving children – aged 3, 6 and 14 – would now have hard lives
Sanders’ mother, Marcia Patton, said that she hoped to find forgiveness for the man who killed her son just two weeks before his birthday.
‘These guns need to be put to peace. Innocent people is being killed for no reason and we got to live with this,’ she said.
‘I’m not going to say I’d like to see [Calhoun] rotting in hell, but if God has it in his heart to forgive him, then I forgive him.’
However, Sanders’ sister, Patricia Jones, denounced Calhoun as a ‘thug’ and a ‘monster’ and promised that ‘There is special place in Hell for him.’
She continued: ‘I don’t feel sorry for his mama, for his kids, for anyone that know him. I hate him. I hope one day God forgives him, but I hate him.
‘I hope he rots in Hell, in jail, and everybody dies around him. I hope he goes out on a stretcher. I hope someone kills him.’
One person did speak up in Calhoun’s favor – a friend, who wrote him a letter of support.
‘That you have someone who still sees some good in you is a blessing,’ Judge Becky Doherty told him, ‘because certainly the families I’ve heard from today don’t see that.
‘And they have every right not to see that, given what you’ve taken from them. You took their lives and changed them forever.’
She asked him if he had anything to say for himself before he was taken away.
He simply said ‘No’ and spat on the floor as he was led out.
The shooting occurred outside this Ravenna Township home. Several of the victims’ relatives said that they wished death and ‘Hell’ on Calhoun before he was taken away