Savannah woman sentenced to life in 2016 slaying
Shanika Latoya Dunbar on Wednesday was sentenced to life without parole plus five years in prison for her murder conviction in the 2016 slaying of a family acquaintance in what the prosecutor said was revenge for a past wrong.
Chatham County Superior Court Judge James F. Bass Jr. imposed the mandatory sentences of life without parole on the murder count and five years, consecutive, on the weapons charge.
In Georgia, murder convictions carry a mandatory life prison sentence but can be imposed with or without the possibility of parole.
A jury found Dunbar, 34, guilty on Sept. 28 of malice and felony murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime in the June 9, 2016, shooting death of Theron Robbins, 32.
The victim was shot twice and killed during an incident at East 33rd Lane and Atlantic Avenue.
Evidence showed Dunbar and the victim quarreled before she shot him once in the shoulder, then a second time to the head from closer up. The fatal shooting was witnessed by Dunbar’s then-10-year-old nephew who was in a car at the scene.
Jurors acquitted Dunbar on a charge of cruelty to a child by shooting his father in the child's presence.
"This was an execution," Chatham County Assistant District Attorney Christy Barker told jurors in her closing argument. "She's done with him for messing with her sister. She saw her opportunity and she took it."
"The defendant picked this fight. She gets mad. She gets in Theron's face. ...Theron gets shot. That's not self-defense. It's just not."
But Assistant Public Defender Bob Attridge argued the slaying was justifiable or self-defense by a woman in what he said "just happened to be a chance encounter" in the area where she lived.
"She shot him and she did it in self-defense," he told the jury, adding the shooting followed what he called a "very heated exchange between two people."
The victim's nephew, now 13, told Savannah-Chatham Police Detective Sgt. Robert Santoro during an interview played for the jury that Dunbar got in his father's face and she shot him.
They were "arguing, arguing, arguing ... She got real mad and shot my daddy."
He told jurors he did not see his father pull a gun.
"Were you afraid?" Barker asked him in court.
"Yes, ma'am, because I thought they were going to shoot me," he responded.
Dunbar, who is also known as Shanika Dunbar Burney, took the witness stand in her own defense and told jurors she drove by the scene where Robbins was parked and confronted him about an earlier incident involving her sister.
She also testified that she was not aware that her nephew was in the car.
"We started arguing," she said.
She said she knew Robbins carried a weapon and saw it in his waistband.
"I see him grab for his waistband and I did the same thing," she said, adding that she had a gun because of the high-crime area where she lived.
"I was mad at this point," she said, adding that she blacked out.
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