Collier's Shooter Sentenced To Life

Judge Imposes Maximum Sentence On Tyrone Hartsfield

Published On: Oct 14 2011 11:59:19 AM EDT  Updated On: Dec 17 2009 06:22:04 AM EST
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -

Tyrone Hartsfield, the man convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of Jaguars player Richard Collier, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Richard Collier was shot as many as 14 times in September 2008 while sitting in an SUV waiting outside a Riverside apartment.

After a two-week trial, Tyrone Hartsfield was convicted last month of attempted murder in the ambush shooting.

Prosecutors called the shooting an act of retaliation for a fight at a nightclub months earlier in which Collier admitted hitting Hartsfield at a nightclub.

He survived the shooting, but was left paralyzed from the waist down and had a leg amputated.

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During a statement at the hearing, Collier cried as he described how Hartsfield not only robbed him of his career as an NFL player, but he almost took his life when he fired 14 shots at him. Collier said four bullets remain in his body.

"What I've had to go through I would not wish on my worst enemy," Collier said.

Hartsfield also gave testimony during the sentencing hearing and continued to maintain his innocence.

"I would never do something like that to a person. Never," Hartsfield said.

His mother and fiancée also testified, asking Judge Mallory Cooper for leniency for Hartsfield.

But prosecutors painted a picture of a career criminal who had been offered plenty of chances to turn his life around.

The minimum sentence for that charge is 25 years in prison, but since Hartsfield was classified a habitual offender, the judge sentenced him to the maximum possible: life without possibility of parole.

"There is not a sentence I could give that would address what happened to Mr. Collier," Cooper said. "It was a cowardly act; it was a brutal act."

Hartsfield's attorneys said they will appeal.

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