An Everett man who authorities deemed an armed career criminal will spend the rest of his life behind bars after being convicted of a 2017 murder in Somerville.
Middlesex Judge Cathleen Campbell on Thursday handed the life sentence to Tony Dyshaun Harris, 34, who was found by a Superior Court jury in June guilty of the murder of 20-year-old Somerville resident Kevin Raymond.
Convictions for armed assault to murder and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon from 2007 led Campbell to find Harris guilty of being an armed career criminal during bench trial in late July, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
Harris also was found guilty by the Middlesex Superior Court jury of illegally carrying and possessing ammunition and a firearm.
The sentencing Thursday includes the possibility of parole at 25 years on the charge of murder and five years to five years and one day concurrent with the murder and each other on the armed career criminal charges, the Middlesex DA’s Office said.
“We will not allow this kind of gun violence to go unchecked in Middlesex County,” DA Marian Ryan said in a statement. “As Harris’s conviction on all of these charges illustrates, we have an unswerving commitment to prosecuting these cases. We will pursue every avenue to hold those defendants, such as Harris, who repeatedly engage in violence and threaten the safety of others, fully accountable.”
Somerville Police responded in the early morning hours of Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017 to a call of gunshots in the area of Jacques Street, finding a revolver and gold chain in the parking lot behind a Somerville Housing Authority development, according to authorities.
Investigators later determined that the revolver and gold chain contained Harris’ DNA on them, and Raymond had been shot three times before being pronounced dead shortly after at an area hospital, authorities say.
The investigation also revealed the car that Harris was seen driving away in in multiple videos matched a vehicle that had been in the area before and after the shooting. Investigators found Raymond’s blood inside the vehicle, according to authorities.
Harris was free at the time of the slaying thanks to charges being dropped in a prior drug case, court records showed.
In August, two months before the killing, Harris posted $5,000 for domestic assault charges and walked free after an Essex Superior Court judge reduced his bail from $50,000, after learning that a prior drug conviction was dropped in Middlesex Superior Court in 2013 because of the state drug lab scandal, the Herald previously reported
Harris had been arrested in 2016 on charges including strangulation, being a felon in possession of a firearm and property destruction, with the earlier drug conviction factoring in his original higher bail, the Essex DA’s Office had told the Herald.
Raymond, a former Somerville High School football standout who played as a freshman on the Franklin Pierce University’s sprint football team in New Hampshire, died less than a week shy of his 21st birthday.