Clark, 21, last month admitted to fatally shooting the 19-year-old from Lebanon last year. Clark was eligible for the death penalty but Prosecutor David Fornshell chose not to seek capital punishment.
Clark pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, a gun specification to aggravated murder and tampering with evidence in Warren County Common Pleas Court. Judge Neal Bronson sentenced him Thursday to life in prison with parole eligibility after 20 years, plus three years for the gun specification and two years for tampering with evidence.
Kim Eve, with her husband, Jim, by her side read statements before Clark’s sentencing. “Now that beautiful face of an angel is in heaven singing in the choir,” she said. “Now he is looking down on all of us and trying to help us get through this. You might have taken my baby in a premeditated, cowardly way, but he’s not gone. You can’t take our memories.”
Clark admitted that he broke into the home Eve shared with two other men in Lebanon.
Following an altercation, Clark shot Eve and then fled the scene, but was spotted placing the gun in a creek.
Eve’s sister Lauren Eve called Clark “cold and heartless”. “You brought a gun to a fist fight and that makes you a coward,” she said.
Clark didn’t speak during the hearing but his mother said the Eve family has her sympathy and then read a Bible verse.
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.
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