MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The second person convicted in the 2020 shooting of a WVU student has been denied mercy.
A Monongalia County jury heard testimony Thursday and found Shaundarius Reeder should spend the rest of his life in prison for his role in the February 2020 death of WVU student Eric Smith.
Reeder will now be sentenced and face life in prison with no chance for parole. The original jury in the case was unable to reach a verdict in the late-2023 trial. The state Supreme Court ordered a new mercy phase trial.
Monongalia County Assistant Prosecutor Brandon Benchoff argued Thursday the man who deserved mercy that night was Smith not Reeder and co-defendant Terrell Linear.
“Why does this man get all those things?” Benchoff asked the 12-member jury. “This man who hunted Eric like an animal and pumped bullet after bullet into his body, who shot him in the back and left him to die scared and alone on the floor of a college apartment hallway over nothing. Why does he get those things? Why does he deserve those things?”
Linear was convicted and sentenced to life with mercy in July 2021.
Reeder and Linear got into a verbal altercation while traveling from downtown to the College Park Apartments in the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 2020. When they arrived, a brief altercation took place in the parking lot before Smith fled inside the building with two females from the vehicle. Reeder and Linear were previously convicted of chasing Smith into the building nad killing him.
The defense raised speculation Thursday that Reeder’s level of intoxication that night could have sparked him to do something he did not have the capacity to understand. Former UPD Officer Aaron Graves helped process Reeder and Linear at the Walmart on the night of the arrest and rebutted that claim.
“Alcohol and Xanax are depressants, sedatives that cause people to slow down, and he was not moving slowly that night,” Graves testified. “And he was able to shoot Eric five times and hit him every time.”
His mother, Christina Mohrrman, who is in a wheelchair battling multiple sclerosis, said police came to her home that morning to tell them their son had been shot and killed.
“They asked if I had heard from Eric, and I told them no and asked why,” Mohrrman said. “He was shot and killed this morning, and I just lost it.”
Stepmother Kelly Smith said Eric accepted children from her previous marriage as his own. Her daughter from a previous marriage shared the same birthday with Eric, and they made it a point to celebrate the day together. But, since the killing, she said the celebrations are not what they used to be if they happen at all.
“They were both born on February 1,” Smith said. “They celebrated their birthdays together and called each other birthday buds, so it’s really hard for Molly; she doesn’t like to celebrate her birthday.
Smith’s father, James, told the jury he learned his son had been murdered while at work that day. The news caused an outburst that resulted in a brief mental health evaluation. Eric was an all-state defensive end in New Jersey high school football who had received a scholarship from Alderson Broaddus University. His desire to fulfill his football dream at the Division I level led him to Morgantown for a tryout he didn’t live long enough to have.
“It hurts; I don’t get a chance to talk to him, and I don’t get to hug him,” Smith said. “I don’t get a chance to see him walk a girl down the aisle, and no grandchildren, that’s never going to happen.”
The defense urged the jury to consider the rough childhood Reeder had the possibility of becoming a new man who could contribute to society by possibly becoming a mentor. The defense argued that if given mercy and ultimately, at some point, parole, those guidelines and the lengthy prison sentence to get there would provide Reeder an opportunity to change.
The jury reached its unanimous verdict late Thursday evening.
Story by Mike Nolting, WAJR