A King County Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced a 32-year-old Burien man to 63 years in prison for the shooting deaths of two Shell service station employees two years ago in Kent.
A jury took only a few hours on Aug. 23 to convict Leland Dean Russell Jr. of two counts of first-degree murder with firearm enhancements for killing Carlos Gonzalez, 26, a store clerk, and David Christianson, 52, the store manager, on Aug. 20, 2014. The jury also found Russell guilty of second-degree assault in a separate incident earlier that morning.
On Friday – in a courtroom at the Regional Justice Center in Kent filled with family and friends of the victims and convicted killer – Senior Deputy Prosecutor Karissa Taylor asked Judge Veronica Alicea Galvan for the highest end of a 55-to-68-year sentence range, citing Russell’s lack of remorse and the brutal nature of the crime.
“This was a case where two men were going about their day, doing their jobs at 8:30 in the morning,” Taylor said. “This isn’t a drug sale gone bad, or bar fight or some other situation where maybe things could have occurred differently from the victims’ point of view. … They were just going about their day. … They lost their lives in a senseless and needless fashion.”
Russell’s attorney, Leta Jeanne Schattauer, asked for a shorter sentence, considering her client’s mental problems and the fact that the deadly shootings were the man’s first felonious act.
Restitution is to be determined, the judge said, and Russell will have no physical contact with his family while incarcerated.
In handing down the sentence, Galvan said Russell made the wrong choices and “glorified and aggrandized” a violent, intimidating lifestyle despite a supportive family. Such wrong choices devastated the lives of others, the judge pointed out.
“I don’t know what you thought was wonderful about it,” Galvan told Russell as he sat stoically. “You have managed to not only take away a son and a father from their families, you managed to take away another son because you managed to take away from yours.
“The actions you took in this case the whole day were done for the mere purpose of a thrill, of feeling like you were somebody or something. It wasn’t done for a reason. … This was no rhyme, no reason. It was, ‘look at me, look at how cool I am, look at who I’m running with, look I have a gun.’ …
“I have no doubt that the meth, the heroin, the drugs in your system did not help. I have no doubt they impacted your judgment, but even again, as I look back on your life, I wonder where did you get the idea that this was a way to live it, that this is what you wanted to be when you grew up?”
Russell addressed the victims’ families and sought forgiveness.
“… There are no words that can truly describe how truly sorry I am for all the pain and suffering I’ve caused,” he said in a prepared statement. “… If I could give up my life to bring back Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Christianson, I would. I’m not an evil person. I have a big heart, and I hope one day I could be forgiven. … I promise I will change lives to help those in need as much as possible while I’m incarcerated because I know that’s how Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Christianson would want it to be.”
Gonzalez and Christianson were shot and killed on a Wednesday morning after they had asked Russell and his friend, Dale D. Lewis Jr., then 19, to leave the store because the pair had started arguments with other customers. Prosecutors alleged a fistfight broke out between Gonzalez and Lewis just outside the store at the corner of 64th Avenue South and South 212th Street.
During the five-week trial, the jury watched video of the arguments, fight and shootings captured by 11 surveillance cameras at the station.
In closing statements, prosecutors told the jury they sought the first-degree charges because Russell premeditated the killings of Gonzalez and Christianson when he returned to his car for a gun and walked back to the fight.
Tony Deniston, the father of Gonzalez, appeared somewhat relieved after the emotional and tense one-hour sentencing.
“(Feeling) closure of the trial? Yes. The closure of losing my son? No,” Deniston said outside the courtroom. “It’s always going to hurt – holidays, birthdays.
“Today was my mom’s birthday. She passed in 2012,” he added. “So today she was looking down on us.”
Deniston was satisified with the outcome.
“He will never see the light of day. What he did was very seneselss. He chose his path, and it was a horrible path,” he said.
But the pain of losing a son will never go away.
“What we’re going to miss most about Carlos is the way he could light up a room. He could make anybody smile. He had an energetic smile about him,” Deniston said. “Knowing that he’s never going to have kids that we can help raise is probably the hardest thing for me and my wife. … This might be the end of the trial, but we have to move on without our son. That’s the hardest thing we will have to do. We will miss Carlos.”
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