A Northern California man was sentenced Monday to 45 years to life behind bars for gunning down a 25-year-old man in Glendale over comments he made to a woman at a nightclub.
Laquan Dontae Parker, 27, of Suisun City, was convicted in May 2018 of first-degree murder and related charges in the death of Phillip Niles Jr., who was shot just before 4 a.m. June 25, 2016, in front of an apartment building in the 1700 block of North Verdugo Road.
Co-defendant Brandon Jamal Perkins, 29, of Stockton, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced earlier this month to more than 26 years to life in state prison.
Both Parker and Perkins had prior felony convictions. The two were arrested along with Dezerea Lyons, a then-18-year-old woman from Napa, at a Monrovia hotel the night of the murder.
Investigators said Lyons, who met Niles out at a Hollywood club, was insulted by something Niles said. She told him, “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m capable of,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
She called Parker to pick her from the apartment complex and when Niles followed her and her friend out of the building, continuing to argue with them, Parker and Perkins confronted him, the newspaper reported.
Niles — who had recently moved from Daytona Beach, Florida, to Los Angeles — was shot multiple times. He ran a short distance before collapsing on the front lawn of a home in the 1600 block of The Midway Street.
No criminal case against Lyons was presented to prosecutors and she was released, according to Ricardo Santiago of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
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