Brittany Rock wakes up in the middle of the night from what feels like a heart attack; her heart and mind racing as intense waves of panic, guilt and grief jolt her from sleep.
“I live with this anxiety, depression, worry,” Rock, 21, told a Ramsey County District Court judge Thursday. “Have you ever lay in the middle of the night with your mind racing? Your heart beating as though it’s irregular? Or feeling like you might die? Obsessing over death because … you stared death in the eyes?
“I was supposed to see my sister in every other way except that way,” Rock continued.
She spoke quietly and quickly as she stood near the front of the courtroom, reading from a statement she wrote to read on the day Kalisa Chardale Smith, 29, was sentenced for her role in Rock’s sister’s murder.
Samantha Burnette, 16, was fatally shot during a robbery attempt last Sept. 25 in an alley in the St. Paul Payne-Phalen neighborhood.
She, Rock and another woman were led there by Smith, a friend of Rock’s who told the group she needed to run a quick errand before driving them home. They met up the night before to hang out and spent the evening driving around and socializing.
In actuality, Smith’s boyfriend, Christopher Calloway, 33, waited for them in the alley with a gun along with two other men — Davonte Bobo and Vincent Reanell Harris — who planned to rob them.
Shortly after they pulled up and Smith got out of the car, the robbery ensued. One of the men pistol-whipped Rock. When Burnette tried to intervene and hit one of the gunmen on the head with a bottle, she was shot dead.
The Minnetonka High School student died in the alley as Smith and Calloway fled in a car.
Rock has spent the nearly 11 months since wondering what she could have done differently.
“Do you know what it’s like … to look certain people in the eye and believe that they don’t somehow blame you,” she said during her statement, her voice shaking as she cried. “Although I didn’t pull the trigger or set it up, I could have saved her, somehow, some way … and I failed her.”
“I will never forget the look in her eyes. The way she last looked at me, scared and terrified,” Rock recalled of her sister. “I miss her. I miss everything about her. Her smile. Her laugh … The more time that goes by, the more I miss her.”
Smith’s attorney also spoke at length at the sentencing, arguing before Judge Jennifer Frisch that Smith’s role was less significant in Burnette’s death because she didn’t know her boyfriend had a gun or that the robbery would turn violent.
He described Calloway as a “domineering thug” who was the principal player in what happened.
“To say that Kalisa Smith planned, masterminded this robbery … is just beyond all the facts,” defense attorney Richard Virnig said.
For those reasons, he asked the judge to sentence Smith in the middle of the roughly five-to-12-year sentencing range agreed to in the plea deal reached with state prosecutors in the case. Per the deal, Smith pleaded guilty in June to one count of second-degree unintentional murder in Burnette’s death.
Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Tanya O’Brien disagreed with Virnig’s characterization of Smith’s culpability and told the judge that, but for Smith, Burnette would have never even met Calloway.
“She had all of the control of the situation. … She was the friend. … She didn’t have to lead (Burnette) into an alley that night,” O’Brien said. “She drove those girls into that warzone.”
The judge ultimately sided with the state and sentenced Smith to nearly 12 years in prison, the maximum allowed under the plea agreement.
With her family sitting in the gallery behind her, Smith stood quietly for much of the hearing.
When given the chance to speak, she tearfully apologized for what she’d done.
“I”m really sorry,” she said. “I apologize to the (Burnette) family, to my family, that I made this happen.”
Forgiveness feels impossible, Rock and Burnette’s grandparents said at the hearing.
Burnette lived in Minnetonka with her grandparents, who had raised her since she was 1 year old. She spent about every other weekend in St. Paul with her mother and Rock before she died.
The young teen was set to graduate from Minnetonka High School next year.
Her family described her as a loving, kind and accepting person, devoted to her family. She liked skateboarding, listening to music and hanging out with her nieces. Despite the difficulties fetal alcohol syndrome presented in her life, she worked hard at school and talked of one day becoming a lawyer.
“She was the bright light in our lives,” said Bonnie Boudreau, Burnette’s grandmother. “We are so proud of the young lady she was becoming.”
Her grandfather, James Simmons, said he misses fishing and camping with her, and their small, daily interactions.
“She’ll never get to come home and give me a hug and tell me how her day was again,” Simmons said. “There are too many kids dying in the streets … She just missed out on a pot of gold, that’s all I got.”
Smith was the last to be sentenced in Burnette’s death. Calloway was sentenced earlier this month to about 30 years in prison.
Bobo, 25, received 15 years. Harris, 30, who did not have a gun during the incident and was convicted of only first-degree aggravated robbery, was sentenced to about four years.