Lake Superior Judge Samuel Cappas sentenced a Gary man to 75 years Thursday for opening fire on a minivan. The shooting killed a man and wounded his one-year-old son.
A jury convicted Terry Horton, 27, on Jan. 15 of murder and a gun enhancement in the May 7, 2022 death of Nehemiah Martin, 25. The child was shot in the arm.
Horton said he was innocent and would appeal.
Martin’s fiancé Selena Saenz was driving with their three kids, aged 3 to 1.
She said Horton “took the colors of life with him” and she now lives in “black and white.”
Her children were left traumatized. She and one of Martin’s sisters, who ran up to the scene, tried to lift Martin back in the minivan to go to a hospital. Her son shows her the physical scar on his arm.
It shattered her dreams for raising her children in a “loving, two-parent household.”
She asked for life without parole.
Latasha Horton, his mother, said she was empathetic to Saenz’s suffering, but her son was “going down for something he didn’t do.”
Deputy Prosecutor Chris Bruno said Horton’s criminal record followed a clear “escalating” line. He was on bond as an accomplice in his step-brother’s fatal gas station shooting when this crime happened.
He acknowledged they didn’t know a possible motive. He asked for 67 years.
Defense lawyer Brandon Hicks said Horton had a “lot of instability” as a child, including being bounced between different foster homes. He had seven kids who would suffer with a long prison term.
There was evidence Martin was armed, Hicks said. Court records note he never fired a weapon.
Horton told Saenz he was “sorry for what happened,” but he was the wrong man.
“I’m not the one who killed him,” Horton said.
Cappas told Horton that he was not “assessing” his innocence, but going by the jury verdict. He listed aggravators, including opening fire on a minivan with Saenz and young children.
Police responded as Martin was lying on the ground near 17th and Tyler Street. Paramedics tried to perform CPR, but he was unresponsive.
Martin was shot in the back of the head, according to paramedics. He was pronounced dead that day by 7 p.m. and suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the head, torso and hand, according to the Lake County Coroner’s Office.
Saenz testified at trial they were returning from picking up takeout at a Gary jerk restaurant when Nehemiah told her to pull over and switch about two minutes later so she could drive. He jumped in the seat behind her.
She was driving slowly on Harrison Street, surrounded by potholes. Then, a driver in a white car pulled up, gave her a “dirty look” and immediately started opening fire at least five times, she said.
Video surveillance appeared to show the other vehicle passing the minivan, before both vehicles coming to a stop, the side minivan door opening, then Martin falling out. The white car speeds off.
During the trial, Martin’s sister Tyronda Martin said she went to the scene. The next day, she went back to the nearby gas station where she overheard 2 or 3 people say “Terry” was the shooter.
She looked up a “Terry” in Gary on Facebook and found two entries. She sent the screenshot to Tyeshia and Saenz. They both said Horton was the man each saw. Afterward, they both picked him out in a different picture on a photo lineup.
“We don’t crowdsource suspects,” Hicks told jurors then. “We need evidence.”
In a lengthy exchange with Lake County Sheriff’s Department Detective Kris Adams, Hicks asked if he had other evidence that showed Horton was there, such as whether a search warrant was executed for Horton’s home for a gun or clothes and cellphone location data and did police find the car or the gun.
Adams said there was no home search warrant because he couldn’t find where Horton stayed. He couldn’t figure out Horton’s cellphone number. Horton’s physical cellphone was never recovered. A murder weapon was not located, which wasn’t unusual, he said.