ATHENS, Ga. — A man has been sentenced for a shooting at an Athens shopping plaza that injured a 5-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl while at dance class back in April.
Rasheed Scott, 38, was sentenced last Wednesday in the Clarke County Superior Court. Scott received 30 years behind bars as a result of a guilty plea by the Western Judicial District Attorney's Office, a release from the Athens-Clarke County Police Department stated.
"The results of this trial illustrates thorough police work by our officers and detectives," Athens-Clarke County Police Chief Jerry Saulters said. "Crimes like this will not be tolerated in our community and we will continue to hold the offenders accountable."
On the evening of April 26, the shooting broke out in a shopping plaza parking lot outside of the Athens dance studio along North Avenue. Witnesses said there were a lot of people outside a barbershop when an argument broke
Ne’vaeh Brown, 5, was warming up for dance class when she was hit in the eye by a stray bullet. 11Alive's Cody Alcorn previously spoke with Ne’vaeh's mother Brittanie Wright who said the 5-year-old lost her eye. Wright said the bullet was just inches away from hitting her brain.
"It was traumatic. To see the injury, the blood, to see everything I didn't know what to do or what to think. I didn't know where the bullet was at, or if it was still in her eye," Wright previously said.
Navaeh Hogue, 14, was also hurt in the shooting. She was shot in the arm trying to protect Brown.
"My instinct is to just grab whoever's closest to me but when I tried to grab (Na'vaeh) my arm started to go numb and my ears started ringing and I couldn't hear anything," Hogue previously said.
Wright said after several surgeries, Brown lost her eye. She was fitted for a prosthetic.