A Columbus gang member who laughed in court at the family of two people he fatally shot and a third he wounded in April 2021 will spend at least 46 years in prison.
In August, a jury found Datwain Crudup, 29, guilty of four counts of murder and one count each of attempted murder and felonious assault for the April 3, 2021, shooting deaths of 19-year-old Nickolas Cowans and 24-year-old Kevin Williams and for wounding the third victim.
Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Jaiza Page on Thursday ordered Crudup to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 46 years.
The sentencing hearing Thursday had several delays as members of the victims' families needed time to compose themselves before continuing with their pre-sentence statements. During one of the breaks, Franklin County Sheriff's deputies moved Crudup to another table in the courtroom because Crudup kept looking back at them and laughing.
"The fact that he could laugh at these women … is the most gross thing I’ve ever seen. Zero has been learned from this," Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Leigh Bayer said. "To have the person who is responsible for their deaths, laugh in their (families') faces during their sentencing is just unfathomable."
Bayer said the victims didn't know what was about to happen to them until the gunshots began ringing out. Crudup had been on parole for an aggravated robbery conviction at the time of the shooting.
"He has not spent any reasonable time in society without some type of violence occurring. That’s what scares me. This man would be perfectly capable of doing the same thing again tomorrow," Bayer said.
Cowans' grandfather, Bruce McCaskill, said despite being an ordained minister, he has been unable to set aside his feelings of hatred toward Crudup.
"To murder people in broad daylight, it shows an evilness that we shouldn’t have to live with that we shouldn't have to be around," McCaskill said. "You have put my soul at stake because there’s no forgiveness. It hurts for me to have to set aside everything I have preached and I have taught because I can’t get this hatefulness out of my heart."
Williams' sister, Ebony Williams, said her family will never be the same after losing her brother and having another relative injured in the shooting. She said she found it hard to believe Crudup, who has children of his own, could wreak that level of havoc on other families.
"I’m pretty sure you don’t want nobody to take yours," she said. "And you took yourself from your own."
Prosecutors say Crudup is a documented member of the Hilltop Posse street gang, which is affiliated with the Crips.
When given an opportunity to speak, Crudup said he had not turned around and maintained he had not committed the murders.
"I didn't do what they're saying I did. I did nothing wrong," Crudup said.
On April 3, 2021, police and prosecutors say Crudup was in a vehicle that went around the corner of an apartment building on the 900 block of Eaton Avenue on the city's West Side, shooting out the window indiscriminately. Prosecutors said Crudup "created a firestorm" that resulted in the deaths of Cowans and Williams and seriously injured a third man.
The shooting occurred around 2:45 p.m. and appeared to be an ambush, court records say.
A video from the apartment complex introduced as evidence at trial shows Crudup getting out of a vehicle, running to the area where the shooting took place and running back to the waiting car.
bbruner@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: After laughing at victims' families, Hilltop gang member sentenced for April 2021 double murder
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