Victim's Mom on Why Killer Needs to Die
Quentin Patrick, Paranoid Crack Dealer, Opens Up With AK-47 on Trick-or-Treaters
Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 1:32 pm
12-year-old T.J. Darrisaw was returning home from a Halloween party with his dad and brothers when they decided to do some trick-or-treating to end the night. But they made the mistake of stopping at the home of Quentin Patrick, a crack dealer gone paranoid after getting shot in a robbery 10 months before...
Patrick's light was on, so they kids assumed he was passing out candy. But they were wearing Halloween masks, which apparently freaked out Patrick's girlfriend. 
Quentin Patrick unloaded 30 shots from an AK-47 into the front of his house
She looked out the window and screamed that there were three large men in masks with a rope outside the door. Though T.J. looks to be a rather big kid, it's hard to mistake a 12-year-old and his brothers on Halloween for masked gunmen.
Patrick grabbed his AK-47, which had been modified to fully automatic. He unloaded the entire magazine -- 30 bullets in all -- into the front of the house.
T.J was shot 11 times. His father and a 9-year-old brother were shot twice, but survived. A third brother was not hit. But T.J. was dead.
Patrick walked out of the house with his hands up when police arrived. In the house detectives found $7,500, four ounces of coke, and all that's needed to turn it into crack. He was charged with drug dealing, murder, and illegal possession of a gun by a felon.
12-year-old T.J. Darrisaw was shot 11 times as he trick-or-treated
But in a strange twist, U.S. District Judge Matthew Perry agreed with defense lawyers that Patrick didn't intend to kill the kid. Yesterday, he found the dealer guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder. And he sentenced him to just 16 years, only months above minimum sentencing guidelines.
Tags: South Carolina
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