Brother sentenced in murder of half-sister, 3

Before having a back-and-forth exchange with his mother during her victim impact statement, Scales waived his trial and any pre-sentence investigation in front of Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Steven Dankof.

“I still love you,” said Inas Scales, the mother of Scales and Carlton. “I did the best to raise you into the man that I thought you was going to be.”

She showed her son a photo of her daughter and said, “I know that it was the devil that took ahold of you,” before adding that he couldn’t even say his sister’s name.

Scales then responded by saying, “Tristan, my little sister,” and by saying that “a mistake happened that day.”

His mother said: “That’s not a mistake. You don’t mistakenly murder somebody.”

The conversation went back and forth, with the defendant saying, “I’m a good person” and that his sister “forgives me.”

Crews responded Feb. 14 to a 911 call from the toddler’s mother in the 800 block of Broad Oak Drive. The mother told investigators she found her daughter unresponsive after returning home from shopping. Medics attempted to revive the toddler but were unsuccessful.

Scales was ordered to pay court costs, but was not fined or ordered to pay restitution. Scales has no possibility for no judicial release or good-time credit and will be subject to lifetime parole supervision if and when he is ever released from prison. He has amassed 179 days of jail-time credit.

“This new journey that you’re going on, I hope you pray and get God in your life,” Inas Scales told her son. “Where you’re going, you’re really, really, really going to need it.”

Scales said he watched his sister every day for six to eight months and “there was nothing ever wrong with her” and that his mother never paid him to babysit. He said he was only 21 and trying to become an adult himself asked her why she was having kids if she wasn’t going to watch them.

“I will see you in 20 years if God is willing,” Inas Scales said. “If God thinks you should spend the rest of your life and die there, that’s what God wants.”