BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. – A man was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday in the killing of a Miami-Dade corrections officer in 2016.
Authorities said Ockeeve Sinclair was 21 years old when he fatally shot Officer Daveon Hall, 40, inside the victim's apartment in Pembroke Pines.
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Sinclair's accomplice, Brian Fairweather, then 29, was initially arrested on multiple charges, including first-degree murder.
Fairweather, however, accepted a plea deal in June and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Pembroke Pines police said Hall was found dead Jan. 29, 2016, inside his apartment in the 1000 block of Southwest 122nd Avenue.
Broward County Crime Stoppers, the Dade County Police Benevolent Association and the Miami-Dade County mayor's office offered a collective reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
According to prosecutors, Sinclair and Fairweather had broken into the officer's apartment with the intention of stealing his guns and watches, and Hall walked in during the burglary at which time Sinclair shot him.
Detectives said surveillance video from Hall's apartment complex shows the two men wearing hoodies while walking between two buildings in the direction of Hall's apartment before he was shot.
Hall was found dead on his living room floor by his mother after he failed to show up for work.
"I have waited for three years, seven months, 14 days and the ninth hour for what seemed like an eternity to witness (my son's) murderer's conviction and sentencing," Hall's mother, Barbara Drummond said in court Wednesday.
Sinclair, now 24, showed no emotion as Drummond called him "scum of the Earth, a murderer, a tragic human waste, a sociopath, a menace to all living things on this Earth."
"You murdered my son in cold blood because you are a coward who could not even give Dave, a better human being than yourself, the opportunity of a fair fight that you would surely have lost," Drummond told Sinclair.
Sinclair's family cried in the courtroom as his fate was handed down, although a life sentence was the minimum punishment Sinclair could have received.