Four men convicted in the killing of Jacksonville rapper Julio Foolio will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Hillsborough Circuit Judge Michelle Sisco sentenced Isaiah Chance, 23, Sean Gathright, 20, Davion Murphy, 29, and Rashad Murphy, 32, on Monday in Tampa, nearly two years after Foolio, born Charles Jones, was shot outside a hotel during his 26th birthday weekend.
The sentence was mandatory after an April jury verdict finding the men guilty in a murder plot tied to a long-running Jacksonville gang feud that prosecutors said spilled from rap videos and social media into real bloodshed.
Sisco looked at the young defendants, some of them fathers, and asked, “And now for what? For what?”
Foolio, 26, had come to Tampa to celebrate his birthday. After a night out, he was sitting in the passenger seat of a Dodge Charger when gunmen opened fire outside the Home2 Suites on McKinley Drive. The rapper was killed, and three others were wounded.
Chance told the court he regretted the life that brought him there. “This dissing, the shooting, it ain’t worth it,” he said.
Davion Murphy also warned young people: “Change your lives.”
Gathright’s grandmother, Lisa Gathright, pleaded for mercy, saying, “This one event should not define his life.”
“Charles Jones is dead and four people will now spend life in prison,” the judge said. “And all for what? Nothing.”
