Nearly three years since 38-year-old shop owner Shannon Collins was stabbed to death on her way to a hair appointment in Santa Cruz, her killer was sentenced on Wednesday to 88 years to life in prison.
After tearful statements in Santa Cruz County Superior Court from her best friend, mother and widower, Judge Timothy Volkmann handed down the maximum sentence to Charles Anthony Edwards III, a 46-year-old from San Francisco. Edwards, who suffers from schizophrenia and has a violent criminal history that started at age 12, offered an apology to Collins’ friends and family during his sentencing. He also claimed he was on methamphetamine and PCP during the killing, though during the trial prosecutor Celia Rowland said there was no evidence of that.
SHANNON OWNED THIS BUSINESS IN SANTA CRUZ.
“I want to say I apologize for the death of Shannon Collins,” Edwards said to about 15 of her friends and family in court. Angered, Edwards also contended that he didn’t get a fair trial because he is black and Santa Cruz is “all white.”
During the trial, a psychiatrist testified that Edwards told him he heard voices from “skeletons” before the slaying. Edwards believed he should kill a stranger, and he said he watched a teenager and a mother and child pass him on the 300 block of Broadway before he attacked Collins, according to testimony.
Minutes after the murder about noon on May 7, 2012, police arrested Edwards a few blocks away. Authorities found his knife and bloody shirt in bushes near the crime scene.
“It was planned, premeditated and calculated,” Rowland said in court Wednesday.
“This is and has been one of the most difficult murders for the community.”
SHE LIKED TO WEAR COSTUMES IN HER STORE AT HALLOWEEN.
A jury found Edwards guilty of murder Feb. 4 and legally sane in a separate decision three weeks later.
Anthony Robinson, Edwards’ primary attorney, said Edwards suffers from a “very serious mental illness” that causes him to “see reality in an alternate way.”
Robinson acknowledged in court that Edwards was released from a state mental hospital because of a clerical error in January 2012, about five months before the murder. Edwards record includes convictions of burglary, drug use, assaulting his mother, battering an 89-year-old man and resisting an officer with threats or violence, according to court records.
“The whole thing is a tragedy,” Robinson said in court Wednesday.
“I just look forward to a day and time when in our society there’s an understanding that this never would have happened if Mr. Edwards had been placed in a hospital long ago and stayed there. He’s a very mentally ill person who belongs in a state hospital.”
RIP SHANNON. ANOTHER ONE OF THE MILLIONS OF WHITE VICTIMS IN THE RACE WAR.
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