An ex-felon convicted of murdering a female housemate with whom he had argued over a $10 Internet bill and of trying to kill her boyfriend was sentenced Thursday to 158 years to life in state prison.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Norm Shapiro imposed the term on Kenneth Theodrick Parks, 57, who was found guilty Sept. 10 of first-degree murder for the April 14, 2014, killing of Terri Smith, 42, who was shot once in the back at a home in the Hyde Park area.
Parks also was convicted of the attempted murder of the woman’s boyfriend, who survived being shot twice.
Jurors found that Parks had personally used and discharged a handgun and that he had inflicted great bodily injury on the woman’s boyfriend.
The six-man, six-woman panel acquitted him of two counts of attempted murder and the lesser counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter involving the woman’s 11-year-old daughter and 20-month-old son, who were not wounded.
During a 911 call, the woman’s daughter identified Parks as the gunman and pleaded for help for her mother, according to Deputy District Attorney Joshua Ritter.
Parks was arrested that day by Los Angeles police after locking himself inside his bedroom at the home, according to the prosecutor.
Parks’ sentence on the murder count was tripled because he had three prior strikes involving his 1982 conviction for forcible oral copulation, kidnapping and robbery stemming from one incident.
—City News Service