Teenage triggerman who ‘executed’ a robbery victim in Montco sentenced to 50 to 100 years in prison

A Norristown teen who used an illegal gun to kill a man during a robbery was sentenced Friday to 50 to 100 years in state prison.

Damon Brantley Jr., 18, was convicted of first-degree murder in September for killing William Carter, 35, during a January robbery planned by another man, Daquan Allen.

Allen, 30, and another accomplice, Jerry Butler, 29, were convicted of second-degree murder and are serving life sentences. Carter’s ex-girlfriend, Katherine Emel, had given Allen information about Carter’s whereabouts as part of a plan to steal money he had recently won from sports gambling.

The three men, along with Justin Davis, 17, cornered Carter on Wood Street in Norristown on Jan. 20. During the scuffle, Carter fought back, and Brantley shot him three times in the head with a handgun modified into an automatic weapon, killing him.

At the time of the shooting, Carter was outside the home where the mother of his child lived with their then-1-year-old daughter.

After the shooting, Brantley destroyed the stolen car the four men had driven to the robbery and fled the area before being arrested in Upstate New York by U.S. Marshals.

During Friday’s hearing, Assistant District Attorney Meghan Carney asked Montgomery County Court Judge William Carpenter for a lengthy sentence, saying Brantley had shown no remorse for his actions. He forced prosecutors to bring the case to trial despite a mountain of evidence proving his involvement, including testimony from Emel and Davis, she said.

“I keep using the word ambush because that’s what it was: [Carter] was unarmed, simply walking out to his car when ... he’s approached by three grown men, manhandled and then executed,” Carney said. “He was running for his life when he was shot.”

But Brantley’s attorney, Evan Kelly, said his client was a good person who had been left to his own devices by his family, had no permanent home and had been sleeping on friends’ floors and couches.

“He’s a good kid who got involved in a horrible situation, and it became a horrible, tragic mistake,” Kelly said. “My heart goes out to the family and what happened to them.”

Kelly described Brantley as “very redeemable.” He said the crime was a ”robbery gone bad” and that Brantley had had no intention to kill Carter.

Carney disagreed, saying Brantley made a series of conscious, deliberate actions leading up to shooting Carter in the head on a cold Norristown street.

She also stressed that Brantley was a week shy of his 18th birthday on Jan. 20, an age at which a murder conviction would mean an automatic life sentence, like those meted out to his two co-defendants, who were adults at the time of the shooting.

Carpenter, the judge, agreed with Carney and called Brantley dangerous as he pronounced the lengthy sentence.

Kelly said he plans to appeal the sentence.