BEL AIR, Md. — Jaylen Prince had just turned 16 when he shot and killed 15-year-old Warren Grant over a girl in a bathroom at Joppatowne High School last year, and despite arguments that he had since obtained his diploma and taken courses to become a productive citizen, Harford County’s top prosecutor wasn’t buying it.
Watch as Jaylen Prince shows little remorse for gunning down classmate
“The biggest thing for me in the defendant’s statement was that he is sorry for the events that transpired that day,” said Harford County State’s Attorney Alison Healey, “He still is not taking accountability for his actions on that day.”
Prosecutors told the judge has a long history of threatening and assaulting other students and administrators before the murder and even after he was convicted while he was staying at the Charles Hickey School.
In victim impact statements, Grant’s friends and family members spoke of a boy looking forward to turning 16 himself, learning how to drive and getting baptized---all cut short by another teen he probably didn’t even know.
As a juvenile, Prince couldn’t receive life without parole, so the judge settled on a total of 80 years for first-degree murder and for the use of a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence.
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It’s expected he will serve about half of that before he can become eligible for parole.
“We don’t tolerate violent crime anywhere here in Harford County and we ask for strong sentences for any violent crime,” said Healey, “but most specifically, we just cannot have our children going to schools and not being safe and we cannot tolerate gun violence in schools and we will not tolerate that here.”
