Jesse Osborne was a fourteen year old living in South Carolina when he would murder a man and a six year old boy
According to court documents Jesse Osborne would fatally shoot his father, before he would go to Townville Elementary in Greenville South Carolina where he would open fire striking six year old Jacob Hall who would die from his injuries three days later in the hospital. Three other students and a teacher were also injured in the school shooting
Jesse Osborne would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for which would later be changed to seventy five years in prison
Jesse Osborne Case
Jesse Osborne, who opened fire on the playground of Townville Elementary School in 2016, had his prison sentence amended on Friday.
The court order changed his two life sentences to 75 years in prison for both counts of murder. According to officials, changing his sentence to a numerical figure allows him to participate in different programs in the S.C. Department of Corrections.
Osborne was 14 years old when he shot and killed 6-year-old Jacob Hall at Townville Elementary. He also killed his father, Jeffrey Osborne, before the school shooting.
Prosecutors said if Osborne were older at the time of the murders, they would have recommended the death penalty.
In a hearing earlier this year, Osborne, now 21, apologized to his victims in court for the first time. His defense attorney Frank Eppes asked a judge to consider resentencing him to 30 years in prison for murder and 15 for attempted murder, citing his age, mental health and history of abuse.
Friday’s court order denies the request for a reduced sentence, saying 75 years is still “effectively a life sentence.”
“At the time of the hearing on the defendant’s motion for reconsideration, defendant had not come to terms with his crimes committed at Townville Elementary School, although he had done so for the murder of his father,” the order states. “Additional, defendant essentially isolated himself in his cell thereby avoiding stressors that could complicate and/or aggravate defendant’s mental health.”
The order says Osborne declined mental health treatment offered by the Department of Corrections.
Townville school shooter’s life sentences changed
Jesse Osborne News
Jesse Osborne, the teenager who pleaded guilty to the Townville Elementary School shooting of 2016, suffered abuse at the hands of the father he killed, according to testimony Wednesday from the teen’s older half-brother.
Ryan Brock, whose mother, Tiffney Osborne, is also Jesse’s mother, testified about Jesse’s home life at a sentencing hearing for the teen. Brock said Jeffrey Osborne, Jesse’s father, physically abused Jesse.
“He would make him pull his pants down… get sticks, belts, whatever he could find, and just start whaling on Jesse,” Brock said. “I could hear the screams throughout the house.”
Brock said he had to work through his own feelings of guilt about what happened to Jesse and how the elementary school shooting happened after Brock, who is 22, left home and moved to Texas.
“Jesse relied on me a lot to look after him and make sure he was OK, and after I left, that was gone for him,” Brock said.
Jesse Osborne has appeared at the Anderson County Courthouse this week for a sentencing hearing related to the killing of his father and a 6-year-old first-grader. Age 14 at the time of the crimes and 17 now, he faces a minimum of 30 years in prison and could spend the rest of his life behind bars
He does not face the death penalty because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled about a decade ago that the death penalty is unconstitutional for people who were younger than 18 at the time of their crimes.
A forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Osborne testified Wednesday that he is pessimistic about the effect that treatment could have on the boy and his future.
James Ballenger, who also evaluated Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof, testified about his assessment of Osborne by saying that he believes Osborne developed a conduct disorder when the boy was in the sixth to eighth grades.
“He doesn’t feel remorse; he doesn’t feel guilt,” Ballenger said, adding that those are the hallmarks of a conduct disorder.
Ballenger said he thinks Osborne may have an antisocial personality disorder but that Osborne is too young for that diagnosis to be made.
“I’m pessimistic that treatment… would make or will make a difference,” Ballenger said. He said that maybe someday Osborne could work inside a prison doing the kind of job that would be given only to a trusted inmate.
“That’s not the same as if you let them out they will live the straight and narrow,” Ballenger said.
Ballenger also testified that he believes Osborne was bullied and bullied others and that “shaped who he is.”
Ernest Martin, who treated Osborne at the Greenville County Juvenile Detention Center, said he believes the teen could be rehabilitated.
Martin said that once when he was working with Osborne, the teen had a “startled reaction” to the slamming of a dryer door. The teen told him that the sound reminded him of gunshots.
Martin testified that Osborne had flashbacks of bullying that he had experienced at school and flashbacks of “trauma he had received at the hands of his father,” who was “verbally and physically abusive.”
Brock said that Jeffrey Osborne withheld food from Jesse to punish him.
Jesse Osborne was expelled from West Oak Middle School for bringing a hatchet and a machete there about six months before the Townville shooting
He turned 14 less than three weeks before Sept. 28, 2016, when, investigators say, Jesse Osborne first killed his father, Jeffrey, 47, in their Townville home, and then stole his truck and drove it about three miles to the elementary school. There, he opened fire on the playground, fatally wounding 6-year-old Jacob Hall.
Jesse Osborne pleaded guilty in December 2018 to two counts of murder and to three counts of attempted murder related to trying to kill two other students and a first-grade teacher on the playground.
Judge Lawton McIntosh is presiding over Osborne’s sentencing hearing this week in downtown Anderson, about 15 miles from the elementary school.
Because of Osborne’s age at the time of the crimes, law says he gets a special hearing connected to his sentencing. In the hearing, McIntosh is considering things that include Osborne’s home life and family relationships, his maturity, the circumstances of the crime, and whether he can be rehabilitated.
I think he’s dangerous,” Mark Wagner, a clinical neuropsychologist, testified Wednesday. “He presents with this very charming and innocent facade.”
Several calls made by Osborne in jail were played in court Wednesday. In one of them, he talked to his grandmother, Patsy Osborne. He repeatedly addressed her respectfully, always saying “Yes, ma’am.”
She told him, “I prayed for you all day long.”
At the end of their talk, Jesse said, “I love you.”
Jesse Osborne was abused by the father he killed, half-brother says
