COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The grandfather of a teen who killed his father and a first-grader at a South Carolina school playground said he hopes his grandson isn’t sentenced to prison for the rest of his life and promised to provide for the teen if he can get out of prison in his 40s.
Tommy Osborne testified Thursday at a special hearing as a judge considers a sentence after his grandson, Jesse Osborne, pleaded guilty to two counts of murder for killing his father and shooting a first-grader at Townville Elementary School in September 2016 when he was 14.
Jesse Osborne faces a possible sentence range of 30 years to life without parole.
Tommy Osborne said he knows his 17-year-old grandson must be punished. He said he would pay for any extra counseling the teen can get behind bars and if the judge doesn’t hand down a life sentence, will create a trust fund for his release and has a promise his church will watch him.
“There will be money, land and a good Christian couple to take care of him — teach him how to buy groceries, drive a car, whatever he needs,” Tommy Osborne said.
Prosecutors are asking for a life sentence. This week’s special hearing is required under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that life sentences for juveniles can’t be mandatory and arbitrary.
Along with testimony about his home life, judge Lawton McIntosh is considering evidence about whether Jesse Osborne can be rehabilitated, the circumstances of the crime and Osborne’s maturity.
Prosecutors said Osborne was obsessed with school shootings, has no regrets about the killings and continuously lies for his own benefit, like looking up symptoms of disorders like autism online and then trying to trick psychiatrist analyzing him.
Psychiatrists called by the defense have said teens’ brains are still developing and it’s unfair to send him away for life when the person he could become is not fully apparent.
Their case attempted to show a teen who suffered abuse from his father, was bullied at school and isolated himself in what he called a “dungeon” — his basement bedroom where he spent all his time after being expelled from middle school for bringing a hatchet on campus.
Tommy Osborne said his grandson wanted to be an astronaut when he was arrested. But after a judge ruled he could be tried as an adult instead of a juvenile where he would have been released from jail at age 21, Osborne found religion and now wants to be a preacher, his grandfather said.
Tommy Osborne said his son was disappointed that Jesse Osborne wasn’t the athletic, competitive son he had hoped for. Jeffrey Osborne kept a clean house with his wife and was trying to make a living raising chickens to provide more for his family. But once he finished what he needed to do, he started drinking beer about every day.
“When Jeffrey was sober, he was the best fellow you’ve ever seen,” said Tommy Osborne, speaking in a raspy voice because he lost his vocal cords to cancer.
Tommy Osborne started crying when a defense lawyer asked him about the day of the shootings. He and his wife found their son dead, shot three times in the head after they couldn’t understand their grandson during a panicked phone call.
Right after finding his son’s body, Tommy Osborne said his grandson called again, saying he was at Townville Elementary School, where he had been a student. The police beat Tommy Osborne to the school.
Jesse Osborne had crashed his father’s truck into the school fence and fired at students on the playground. Six-year-old Jacob Hall was shot in the leg and bled to death. A teacher and two other students suffered minor injuries.
Prosecutors said Jesse Osborne planned and wanted to kill dozens and has said he was disappointed that the act of killing didn’t feel the same way the teen thought it would.
After Tommy Osborne talked about a possible future out of prison for his grandson, Solicitor David Wagner ended a contentious cross examination of Tommy Osborne by asking what kind of future the boy shot on the playground had.
“He don’t have none and my son don’t have none either,” Tommy Osborne said.
Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.
