MIAMI — A man who was 15 when he shot and killed a 17-year-old boy in northwest Miami-Dade in 2022 learned his fate on Monday.
Tavarus Williams was charged as an adult in the May 4, 2022 shooting death of Cairi McNear in the courtyard of an apartment complex at 7126 NW 14th Place in the unincorporated Gladeview area, just north of Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood.
Williams, now 19, told a judge he was guilty of second-degree murder. Investigators with what was then the Miami-Dade Police Department arrested him days after the shooting and said that Williams shot McNear eight times following an argument.
Williams received a 25-year sentence followed by a decade of probation.
Family members of both McNear and Williams were in a Miami courtroom on Monday.
Aurianna McNear, Cairi McNear’s mother, offered forgiveness to Williams, saying she hopes to be a mentor to him.
“I am merciful for you. I want to get to know you. I want to become, at some point when my heart heals, to love you,” she said. “I want you to replace what you took from me. Cairi was my heartbeat.”
Angela Williams, Tavarus Williams’ aunt, also spoke.
“The fact that he’s done something wrong, he may have not known it at the time, he’s come to accept it and we just want to say thank you for forgiving him,” she said.
Williams told both the judge and the victim’s family that he hopes that one day they can see him as someone that they can care about and not someone that they hate.
In addition to his prison and probation terms, Williams must write a letter of apology, which Local 10 News learned that he has already submitted to the victim’s family.
He also must undergo substance abuse and mental health treatment and make a donation to a victim’s compensation fund.
Williams, as a condition of his sentence, cannot mention McNear in any sort of song or rap lyrics and is now allowed to communicate with Aurianna McNear.
That communication must be done so through the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and cannot be in any sort of threatening manner.
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