A judge Tuesday sentenced a Hill District man to at least 12½ years in prison for his role in an Oct. 15, 2022, gang-related shooting on Pittsburgh’s North Side that left three dead.
In January, a jury acquitted Jaylone Hines, 25, in the 2022 killing of Jacquelyn Mehalic, 33, of Shadyside and Betty J. Averytt, 59, of the North Side as they waited at a bus shelter at Cedar Avenue and Pressley Street in the city’s East Allegheny neighborhood.
Jurors, however, convicted Hines on two gun charges.
Authorities described the women as innocent bystanders gunned down when they were caught in the cross fire during a shootout between two groups, one of which included Hines.
A third person, John Hornezes, Jr., also was killed that night.
Hines’ attorney argued his client had fired multiple times in self-defense.
Allegheny County Common Pleas Court Judge Bruce R. Beemer sentenced Hines to 12½ to 25 years. He will get credit for the 1,267 days he already has served in the Allegheny County Jail.
The maximum jail time that sentencing guidelines allowed was 13 to 26 years. Prosecutors pushed for the harshest sentence, calling Hines a “repeat felon.” Hines’ attorney sought a 6- to 12-year-long sentence.
In 2020, Beemer sent Hines to prison for 3 to 6 years on a separate gun charge conviction, court records show.
“Your determination to possess a gun, while on parole for possessing a gun … led to this horrible sequence of events,” Beemer said Tuesday in an 18-minute-long speech. “You’re not sentenced today for the tragedy that unfolded. You’re being sentenced here today because you won’t stop.”
Mehalic’s mother, reading a statement in court, told Beemer she “never expected closure.”
“Heartbreak — that is the journey we started on Oct. 15, 2022,” Bridgette Mehalic, 60, of Coral, Indiana County, said when reading her statement. “They can twist it any way they want; Jacquelyn was murdered.”
“We will continue to live our lives without justice,” Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Emma Schoedel said while reading a letter from Averytt’s daughter, LaRonda Averytt, 39, of Swissvale. “We were given nothing.”
Averytt refused to enter the courtroom during the sentencing, citing dismay over the lack of a homicide conviction.
Mehalic’s mother and Averytt’s daughter embraced on the courthouse’s fourth floor after the sentencing.
“It’s as good as it’s going to get today,” Mehalic, occasionally blotting her tear-filled eyes with tissues, told TribLive. “That’s all we can ask for.”
Hines apologized to Mehalic’s and Averytt’s families in a brief, three-sentence statement before Beemer handed down the sentence.
“I just want to say I’m sorry to the victims’ families,” Hines said.
Police say the shooting precipitated additional violence between the two groups involved that night — the Brighton Place Crips and The Commons — including a shooting two weeks later outside the funeral for Hornezes.
A second person charged in the shooting that killed Averytt and Mehalic — Charron Troutman, 21, of Pittsburgh — was sentenced last year to at least eight years in state prison as part of a plea agreement.
He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy, firearms charges and multiple counts of reckless endangerment.
In exchange, the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office withdrew a count of attempted homicide.
The DA’s office has declined to comment on jurors acquitting Hines in the 2022 slayings.
Rebecca Spangler, the district attorney’s chief of staff, previously told TribLive prosecutors “vigorously presented at trial what it believed to be evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Hines committed the crimes charged.”
Bishop, who represented Hines, said jurors believed his argument that Hines fired in self-defense.
“This carload of Crips, they went there (to the Sunoco) knowing that, if they were seen, it was going to set off alarms — and it did,” Bishop said previously. “The Crips, they really spurred this violence. And Jaylone and his friends were defending themselves.”