A Toledo man convicted two years ago of involuntary manslaughter for the shooting death of his then-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend was released from prison more than a year early Wednesday morning by a Lucas County judge.
Kedontae Colter, 24, was originally charged with murder for the August, 2021, death of Daryl Foster III, but under a plea bargain he agreed to enter an Alford plea to the lesser charge, and four other counts were dropped. Including a one-year gun specification, he was sentenced to four years in prison, and with 10½ months time served and good-behavior credit he was due for release July 31, 2025.
Judge Stacy Cook placed Colter on five years’ supervised release during which he is not to possess firearms or ammunition, stay clean of intoxicants, and be gainfully employed while completing a graduation-equivalency diploma program. She also ordered him to post nothing on Facebook or other social media “that can be gleaned to be negative or disrespectful toward the victim.”
The decision to release Colter did not sit well with relatives of Mr. Foster in attendance Wednesday.
“I’m totally disgusted. I think he should have had to finish his prison sentence,” Amber Isaac, an aunt who had raised the victim until he was 12, said outside the courtroom after having submitted a letter to Judge Cook.
“I feel in my heart that he hasn’t shown any remorse at all for what he did,” she wrote in the letter. “... I don’t feel that three years in prison was enough for him to realize what he has done.”
The shooting occurred, authorities said, as Colter tried to leave the Linda Arms Apartments in the 1000 block of South Byrne Road, where he and Mr. Foster had argued. But Mr. Foster reached into the car and a struggle ensued over a gun Colter legally owned.
In a Jan. 5 motion for judicial release, defense lawyer David Klucas said Colter had engaged in “educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programming” in prison and “remains genuinely remorseful for this offense and believes he is in a position to be released on supervision and start giving something back to society.”
Had the case gone to trial, meanwhile, a self-defense argument would have been made, the lawyer said.
William Dailey, the assistant Lucas County prosecutor who handled the case, said at the time there was a high chance of a jury acquitting Colter with a self-defense claim. Mr. Klucas said at the time that another charge in the indictment, shooting into a habitation, prompted Colter’s decision to accept the plea agreement because self-defense might not have applied to it.
And during the hearing Wednesday, Assistant Prosecutor Michael Bahner told the judge he had confirmed recently with Mr. Dailey, who now works in Wood County, that the possibility of early judicial release did arise during the plea negotiations.
Under the Alford plea, Colter did not admit guilt but conceded that sufficient evidence existed that might have led a jury to convict him.
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