YORK --
A Rock Hill 20-year-old escaped a murder charge on Friday, but faces a 15-year sentence for his involvement in a deadly afternoon gun fight that claimed his cousin's life and left him blind.
Tryson Jones pled guilty to assault and battery with intent to kill, conspiracy and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime for the Oct. 9 shooting.
Jones and three other men went to Kwasi Barber's house on Catherine Street in Rock Hill "to settle a score," Jones said Friday in the 16th Circuit Court.
Jones was accompanied by his cousin Tommy Leon Barber, Kennedy Chisolm and Dewayne Cherry.
According to a Rock Hill police report, Barber heard a knock at the door. When he looked outside the side window, he saw one of the suspects, and they began shooting into his house.
Barber retrieved a .357 Magnum revolver he kept in the house and tried to climb out of a window, Deputy Solicitor Willy Thompson said Friday in court.
During the shooting, Tommy Leon Barber, Jones' 18-year-old cousin, was killed by a 9-millimeter gunshot wound to the head, Thompson said. Jones was carrying an assault rifle, not a 9-millimeter.
Tommy Barber was found behind the house wearing latex gloves with a pistol in his right hand, according to the police report.
After fleeing the scene, Jones was found by the police nearby in a Honda which had crashed into a utility pole on Workman Street. The assault rifle he was carrying had been fired four times, according to evidence found at the scene, Thompson said.
Jones was also shot in the head during the melee where 15 to 18 shots were fired, Thompson said.
Jones said his eyesight is "basically gone" from a gunshot wound.
Cherry, 19, faces assault and battery with intent to kill, conspiracy, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime charges, plus a murder charge.
On June 24, Chisolm, 20, pled guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to five years.
His other charges were dropped, Thompson said, because he provided information that led to Cherry's arrest, and "the case against Chisholm was very circumstantial and would have been difficult to prove," Thompson later wrote.
Fabian McCullough, Jones' uncle and Tommy Barber's father, asked the court for mercy so his family can "start this healing process," he said. "We don't want to lose someone else. We want to be a family as we were before all this tragedy happened," he said.
Jones' mother asked the court to consider her son's health and their family's recent loss of her other son in February.
Circuit Judge P. Brooks Goldsmith said he would take their requests into consideration, but that "Going to settle a score is akin to vigilante justice - something society can't accept," he said.
"We've got to do something about the guns," he said.
The Jones family declined to comment after the sentencing.
"I'm glad we got the murder dismissed," said Derek Chiarenza, Jones' defense attorney. "That's a good start."
Chiarenza said Jones' family could not understand why Jones got 15 years when his co-conspirator got only five. But, he said, the outcome is still better than if Jones had gone to trial and lost.
Though worried about Jones' medical condition, Chiarenza said Jones is under the ongoing supervision of a neurologist.
