LIMA — A Missouri man who facilitated a 2016 drug deal that ultimately led to the death of Wapakoneta resident Ryan Van Buskirk was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison.
Rione A. Gray, 22, of Florissant, Missouri, likely would have have received a lighter sentence if not for what Allen County Common Pleas Court Judge David Cheney said was the continuous “smirk” on the face of the defendant throughout the sentencing hearing.
Gray is one of two men originally charged with murder in the Nov. 21, 2016, death of VanBuskirk in the 700 block of Catalpa Avenue. The other defendant in the case, Chaz Jackson, has eluded law enforcement authorities for more than a year and remains at large.
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Terri Kohlreiser said in court Wednesday that Jackson pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the Wapakoneta man, but she noted Gray bore a portion of the responsibility for setting up the drug deal.
“With drugs often comes guns … and violence … and death,” Kohlreiser told the court. “The defendant actively set up a drug deal, and a man was killed. This defendant was not the trigger man, but he played a role in this.”
Gray was indicted by an Allen County grand jury on June 15 on charges of murder with firearm specifications, an unclassified felony; involuntary manslaughter with gun specifications, a first-degree felony; and aggravated robbery with firearm specifications, also a firt-degree felony.
Gray previously accepted a plea agreement crafted by Allen County prosecutors that called for him to plead guilty to a third-degree felony charge of involuntary manslaughter, with a firearm specification. In exchange for that guilty plea, the state agreed to drop charges of murder and aggravated robbery.
Gray was captured earlier this year in St. Louis, Missouri, after police there came across him. Lima Police detectives drove to St. Louis in April to retrieve him.
Cheney said he had come into Wednesday’s sentencing hearing with the intent of handing Gray a more lenient sentence, but the apparent lack of remorse exhibited by the defendant caused the judge to change his mind.
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