A Clairton man will spend 15 to 40 years for killing his girlfriend in Homewood last year.
Sanders Barber, 45, pleaded guilty Thursday to third-degree murder and a firearms charge before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman.
Pittsburgh police were called to a home on Monticello Street in Homewood in the early morning hours of March 30, 2020, where they found a resident there, Shade-a Johnson, dead from a gunshot wound.
Witnesses said Johnson’s boyfriend, known as “Von,” had been playing with a small, black and yellow gun at her home all night, including firing it earlier in the evening, which triggered the city’s ShotSpotter system, according to a criminal complaint.
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A Washington County man who was convicted of killing an elderly Upper St. Clair woman in 2003 and given the death penalty will get a new sentencing hearing.
Patrick Stollar, 42, appeared on a video screen from prison during a brief hearing on Thursday before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman.
His attorney, Thomas N. Farrell, argued that Cashman failed to give the jury in Stollar’s 2008 trial the proper instruction regarding his lack of any previous criminal convictions before it began deliberating his sentence. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Acknowledging the error, the prosecution conceded to the new penalty hearing.