Jury convicts Lexington father of shooting, killing son. Life sentence recommended
A Lexington father accused of shooting and killing his son on Father’s Day was found guilty of murder by a jury Wednesday, according to the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office.
The jury returned the guilty verdict for James Harvey Hendron Jr., 51 around 7 p.m. Wednesday after deliberating for roughly four and-a-half hours, according to Katie Schafer, a prosecutor who tried the case along with Phil West. The jury recommended that Hendron serve a life sentence in prison for killing his 23-year-old son, Austin Hendron.
“We didn’t ask for that,” Schafer said. “We asked the jury to decide what they thought was an appropriate punishment given the fact that he shot and killed his own son. The range could’ve been anywhere from 20-50 years, or life, and they decided to give him life.”
Kimberly Baird, Commonwealth’s attorney for Fayette County, said it’s uncommon for life sentences to be given out in murder trials and a lot of that depends on a number of circumstances.
“A lot of it depends on the facts and circumstances of a case, the evidence that comes in, the prior record of a person, the makeup of a jury,” Baird said. “There’s a lot of factors that play into that.”
The defense argued that James Hendron acted in self defense and painted the son as the main aggressor in the altercation, which occurred in a driveway in a Lexington neighborhood.
Schafer said the jury wasn’t swayed much by the defense’s arguments based on the facts in the case.
“The jury believed that the defendant went outside and chased his son out of his house and shot him three times, killed him, then went back inside the house and called the victim’s mother and told her to come get her son because he shot him,” Schafer said.
Prior court testimony indicated that was how the incident unfolded.
The shooting happened in the 100 block of St. Ann Drive in June 2018, police said previously. Austin Hendron died after being taken to a hospital.
James Hendron is scheduled to be sentenced by a judge in May.
