Sentence for driver in Kettering killing: What each side wants

Miles Heizer is set to be sentenced on June 26. FILE

Miles Heizer is set to be sentenced on June 26. FILE

Prosecutors want an accomplice in the 2016 Kettering killing of a Fairmont High School student to serve more prison time because they say he’s dangerous.

The attorney for Miles Heizer, 21, said his client has matured since Kylen Gregory’s fatal shooting of Ronnie Bowers and should be freed when his two-year term ends later this year.

Heizer, the driver of the car carrying Gregory and others the night of the Sept. 4, 2016, is set to be sentenced June 26 by Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Dennis Langer. The sentencing had been set for today, but has been pushed back, according to the judge’s office.

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Heizer pleaded guilty last year to tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony with a maximum punishment of three years in prison, records show.

Last week, Langer sentenced Gregory, 19, to 11 years minus time served for killing Bowers. The 16-year-old innocent bystander’s group of friends twice sought to flee confrontations involving Gregory and Heizer the night of the shooting on Willowdale Avenue, trial witness said.

But they were “stalked and hunted,” prosecutors said, by the group, which included two teens who in 2016 pleaded guilty to lesser charges in juvenile court.

Gregory has been in custody since just after the shooting. His case is returning to juvenile court – where he could be freed at age 21 – because he was not convicted of murder, the charge which sent his case to adult court.

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Heizer is in the Madison Correctional Institution serving time in an unrelated case, court records show. He was sentenced in October 2017 to two years after he pleaded guilty to felonious assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records.

Prosecutors want a consecutive sentence to the time Heizer is now serving, indicating he played a role in hiding Gregory’s gun after the shooting, Assistant Prosecutor Lynda Dodd’s filing states.

Heizer “was the only adult with the group that stalked and hunted down” Bowers and his friends, the filing states.

And he was “the driver who led the hunt” and “the driver who after the shooting chose not to get help” for Bowers, who died two days later from a bullet wound to the head in Kettering’s first gun-related homicide since 2007.

“Certainly, the most serious crime to tamper with evidence is a homicide,” Dodd stated. “But for quick action by law enforcement, the gun may have been lost, and the shooter never apprehended.”

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Heizer is asking for leniency and his attorney, Dennis Lieberman, wants a concurrent sentence.

Lieberman’s sentencing memorandum said his client is a changed person who is serving the remainder of a two-year term with “no violations in over eight months.”

“The Miles Heizer today would have been able to try and stop the escalation and try to prevent the tragic loss of life,” Lieberman’s filing states. “Unfortunately for everyone…..he did not step up and be a man.”

Heizer said in a two-page, handwritten letter to Langer that he “remorseful and sorry” for his actions in “senseless violence.”

“That night I made the mistake of not stepping up and being the adult,” the letter states. “I had the chance to de-escalate the situation, and I came up short.”

Upon release, Heizer wrote, he plans to attend barber college a pursue a license in that field.

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