Photo: Facebook
With his wife recovering from the C-section delivery five weeks earlier of their newborn, Gerard Grandzol took the couple’s 2-year-old daughter and the family dog to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park on Sept. 7, 2017, where they tossed a Frisbee.
Grandzol, 38, turned over the former, but told them he wanted to grab his daughter, still secured in the vehicle’s back seat.
“We don’t care,” said Marvin Roberts, then 16, who next fired two fatal shots at Grandzol’s head, prosecutors said, according toNBC Philadelphia.
Surveillance footage showed the brothers laughing afterward, reportsPhilly.com.
From inside the couple’s home, Kristin Grandzol heard the shots and raced outside, where she heard her daughter’s screams and found her husband on the ground, “choking on his own blood,” she said in court Friday, according to the NBC outlet.
Her daughter “witnessed something that night men who go to war never see,” she said.
“This is what was happening while the defendants laughed,” she said.
Marvin Roberts.Philadelphia Police Department
Roberts, now 18, pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder and other crimes related to the botched robbery and carjacking, and was sentenced to 35-years-to-life in prison, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office confirms to PEOPLE.
His sentencing follows the previous conviction of his older brother, Maurice Roberts, 21, who pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, robbery and conspiracy in the case and was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison, according to the district attorney’s office
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Clickhereto get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
Among those family members and friends of Grandzol who testified Friday at the hearing where Marvin Roberts was sentenced, one said Grandzol was “our Santa Claus, our Mr. Rogers, and our Mr. Fix-It,” reports Philly.com.
He was hailed as someone who brought people together through his work with a Center City recruitment firm, and an urban advocate and activist prominent in his current and former city neighborhoods.
Philadelphia City Council President Darrell L. Clarke called Grandzol “the go-to guy” in his community, Grandzol’s widow said Friday, according to Philly.com.
“This was a truly senseless tragedy and our hearts go out to Mr. Grandzol’s family, as well as the Spring Garden and Fairmount community that he faithfully served,” said Ben Waxman, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.
source: people.com
