FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – The face of the shooter hardly changed.
Aung Oo, the teenager who pleaded guilty to shooting 21-year-old Luke Borror over a few lousy vape cartridges, apologized through his attorney, Gregory Ridenour, who read his short statement in court Monday morning.
But the family of Borror saw little in his demeanor to indicate remorse. That was left to Oo’s female family members – his mother and an aunt – who stood at the mic in Allen Superior Court Judge David Zent’s courtroom, trembling as they spoke their words through tears and relying on an interpreter to translate their native Burmese into English.
“I stand up here and I cry,” said Luke’s father, Matthew Borror, the first of the victim’s family to address the judge. “I ache for my son. I wish he’d never killed my son. He shot him in the back and the side.” Then looking at Oo, dressed in a black jacket and check shirt, he repeated his pain.
“I wish you’d never done that but you did or he’d still be here,” Borror said. Today he wanted Luke to get justice.
Zent listened to many of Luke’s family members and gave 16-year-old Oo the maximum sentence for felony murder – 65 years. In exchange for the plea deal, charges for murder, robbery resulting in death and using a firearm in the commission of an offense were dismissed, but felony murder carries the same sentence as murder.
Chief Deputy Prosecutor Thomas Chaille noted that even if Oo was a minor, a risk assessment did not find the young offender capable of rehabilitation.
Oo seemed unmoved by the pleadings of his family or the tears shed over his victim. The fact that he took responsibility for the homicide was “only because he was on camera and he got caught. Prior to that he was blaming it on everyone else,” Luke’s aunt, Amanda, said. She said she did not want her last name used for publication.
The family also cited, in and out of the courtroom, Facebook comments made by Oo and his friends that mocked in crude terms the loss of Luke Borror.
Borror was shot nearly a year ago on April 6 around 7:45 p.m. as he met Oo a second time that day to sell him vapes, according to testimony in court Monday. The sale was arranged online. The two parties met at New Covenant Church parking lot by the garbage bins.
Borror was uneasy about meeting Oo. He decided to make a Facetime phone call with his friend Trenton Clodfelter who stayed on the phone, “just in case,” he said. Borror turned off the camera mode when he pulled up to the agreed location, so Clodfelter only heard a thump and then gunshots.
By the time Clodfelter got to the church, his friend’s lifeless body was on the ground. He heard the voices that included Oo and his friend Swar Hit, now 17, due to be sentenced for his involvement on April 24, also by Judge Zent.
Video surveillance camera recorded the entire robbery-turned-homicide, the physical fight for a black backpack between Luke and Hit, Hit grabbing vape pens that spilled on to the ground and then Oo shooting Luke, according to a probable cause affidavit written by homicide detective Aaron Johnson.
The two fled through an open field in the back of the church to Cheviot Drive and Holgate Drive in the direction of apartment complexes there. Later in a police interview, Hit admitted that the intent was to “steal puff bars.” Hit said he didn’t know what Oo, whose street name is TJ, did with the gun or the backpack.
“They showed him no mercy,” Leah Borror, his grandmother said. “They ran away and let him bleed to death.” Like so many others, she spoke about his enthusiasm for life, his dreams of opening a garage and his entrepreneurship. He already had an online business, she said.
At five, he sold seashells and rocks door to door. At age nine, he moved on to Nike socks. Then there were the Zodiac necklaces. In every endeavor, he engaged his family and his friends.
“He was driven. He was ambitious. He knew how to do things. He could help us out doing things. He spent so much time with his cousins playing video games online. He was a great kid. Everybody loved him. Everybody who knew him loved him,” Danielle Magner, his aunt, said just after the sentencing.
Most of all, his grandmother said she’ll miss the weekly lunch or dinner with him, one of the many ways he was close to family and friends.
“He was a beautiful person inside and out,” she said.
Luke’s only sibling, Renee was nine when Luke was born, and now mourns the fact that Luke will never marry, have children or realize all his business dreams. They saw each other two days before his death on her birthday. “Sis,” was what he called her, always “Sis. When I wake up every day, I’m wishing it was a bad dream.”
But the nightmare never ends, as Tonia Magner, his mother, told Zent. Luke was the kind of son who had plans to buy a home and move his mother in with him. She saw him just before he was killed.
“If you haven’t lost a child, you’ll never understand the pain,” Tonia Magner said during her statement. “He was lying there alone as he was dying. He didn’t have to kill him. My only son.”
Sometimes, she said she can hardly breathe, the pain of her loss is so intense.
“Every day I wake up, hoping this nightmare is over. This pain I would not wish on anyone,” Tonia Magner said. When she goes into his bedroom, sometimes she just collapses on his bed and cries.
Relatives from Tennessee, Oregon and Illinois made the special trip for the sentencing, peering into the eyes of Oo who smiled at his attorney when he walked in and gave him a firm handshake. If he did smile at his family, no one appeared to see it.
”We’re relieved that justice was finally served for my nephew,” Danielle Magner, said. “He deserved this justice. What happened to him was not fair. I don’t wish it upon anyone and I’m glad that my family got the justice we deserved today.
