Laura Sobnosky read aloud in court from a sheet of paper as she described the son she and her husband struggled to have who was ripped from them in a random encounter on an early morning of Halloween weekend 2022.
"He was kind and loving to everyone," she said.
The comments came Thursday during a hearing where the man whose stray gunfire killed Youngstown State University honors student Kevin Sobnosky learned he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Stephen McIntosh sentenced Keimariyon Ross to a life sentence with his first eligibility for parole in 32 years.
Sobnosky, 21, of Mahoning County, died Oct. 30, 2022 , after one of the bullets from then-18-year-old Ross ' Draco pistol struck him in the head. The style of gun fires the same size bullets used in an AK-47 rifle.
Ross, now 20, argued at trial that he fired in self-defense during a shootout in the parking lot of a Sheetz gas station on Cassady Avenue. Video from the gas station played during the trial showed Ross standing up in a vehicle, firing more than a half dozen shots at Sobnosky's vehicle.
Prosecutors said Ross and his friends went to the gas station around 3:45 a.m. and spotted a person with whom one in the group had an issue. Surveillance cameras at the gas station captured the fatal encounter.
Sobnosky and three of his friends left a Halloween party at Ohio State University and went to the gas station around 3:45 a.m. to fill up their car before heading back to the Youngstown area, prosecutors said.
Sobnosky was in the front passenger seat. The bullet that struck him went through one of the vehicle's back windows, the driver's headrest and into his head while he was leaning forward. Ross testified he shot at the SUV because he believed it was a sedan that had fired shots at his group of friends.
Ross told McIntosh Friday the shooting was an "honest mistake."
"Keimariyon Ross didn't care who was on the other side of that firearm," Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Leigh Bayer said. "This is not something he had to do. This is something he chose to do. What he didn't realize that night was that there were so many cameras."
McIntosh agreed with Bayer's assessment, saying Ross and other young men like him act irresponsibly by carrying guns and not thinking about the consequences of their actions.
"Are you willing to accept the consequences of you harming someone else," McIntosh said. "When you say an honest mistake, where that concerns the court, you intentionally shot into a car. You intentionally shot into that car to cause harm to someone.
"The easiest thing for you to do is not get involved at all."
Sobnosky's parents and the parents of one of the men who was in the car the night of the shooting were given a chance to speak before the judge handed down his sentence.
"Our whole world was shattered and has been a nightmare ever since Keimariyon Ross raised his gun and shot Kevin in the head, murdering him in cold blood," his father, Damien Sobnosky, said. "We are devastated by the loss of Kevin. We mourn his unlimited potential in life that will now never be realized in death."
Laura Kemp, the mother of one of the men, recalled the frantic phone call she got from her son and the hurried drive to Columbus from Youngstown with many questions but few answers.
"Jacob was standing there, covered in Kevin’s blood, trembling, crying and reaching out for me," she said. "They were doing nothing that night, they were just there having fun."
Sobnosky's parents described their son as "Kevin from heaven," overjoyed at his birth after struggling to have a child. They spoke of the light he had and the hole that has been left by the "unnecessary, unprovoked and irreversible" shooting.
The jury previously found Ross guilty of two counts of murder, three counts each of felonious assault and attempted murder and one count of improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle.
Following the verdict, more than half the jury members spoke to Sobnosky's parents in the courthouse hallway, offering handshakes, hugs and condolences.
Another person involved in the shooting, Tyyaun Sullivan, pleaded guilty to felonious assault and received a sentence of at least nine and no more than 10 ½ years in prison.
bbruner@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: 'Our whole world was shattered': Youngstown honors student's killer sentenced to prison
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