Sorenta Hylton was asleep in her bed around 3:45 a.m. on April 25, 2022, when bullets tore through the walls, one of them striking her in the shoulder and traveling into her lung.
About an hour later, the 31-year-old mother of three was dead.
On Tuesday, two of the men who fired into Hylton's home admitted their involvement in the shooting and received sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 18 years each.
Tyreese Watkins, 21, and Dranoel Durham, who was 17 at the time of the shooting and is now 19, both entered guilty pleas to a single count of murder. Both were scheduled to go to trial Monday.
Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor David Zeyen said Hylton, her fiancé and her three children, all of whom were under the age of 13, were asleep in the apartment on the 1300 block of Vida Court on the city's Southwest Side.
No one in the apartment had any connection to Watkins, Durham, two other men charged in the case or the woman who drove them there.
Hylton's father, Ervin Hylton, said Monday that he doesn't understand why his daughter was targeted or why young people resolve their differences with firearms.
"If it wasn't my daughter, it would have been somebody else," he said. "My daughter was a very loving and caring mother and she did nothing to deserve what happened to her. There's no excuse for what they did."
Video surveillance footage from the apartment showed a Ford Fusion backing up to Hylton's apartment and four people getting out of the car. Zeyen said all four fired guns and police recovered 27 bullet casings in the aftermath of the shooting.
Detectives located the car and tied it to Dashae Tinsley, 27, who admitted to driving the four shooters to the apartment.
Tinsley was also able to help lead detectives to Watkins and his cousin, Durham, Zeyen said. Tinsley previously pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault and is scheduled to be sentenced at a later date.
Detectives ultimately identified Watkins, Durham, 23-year-old Isaiah Alexander and a 15-year-old as being the shooters.
Zeyen said as best as detectives and prosecutors can determine, the shooters had targeted the wrong home.
Both Watkins and Durham gave brief statements to Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Kim Brown Monday, apologizing for their actions. Both said Hylton was innocent and not the intended target.
"She didn't have anything to do with anything," Durham said.
Brown ordered each man to serve a sentence of life in prison without the option of parole for at least 18 years, the only available sentencing option under Ohio law for murder with a three-year firearm specification.
Alexander's case is scheduled to go to trial at a later date.
bbruner@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Two men sentenced for firing dozens of rounds into wrong apartment, killing innocent woman
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