A married Michigan couple and their adult son have been sentenced to life in prison in the fatal shooting of a store security guard in May 2020.
via People:
The security guard, Calvin Munerlyn, had asked the woman’s daughter to wear a face covering before shopping at the local Family Dollar store.
Sharmel Lashe Teague, 45; her husband Larry Edward Teague, 44; and her son Ramonyea Travon Bishop, 23, were previously convicted of premeditated murder. They will serve a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. They were sentenced by Genesee Circuit Court Judge Brian Pickell after a trial that lasted several weeks.
Matthew Smith, an assistant prosecuting attorney on the case, said he’d “never seen three more deserving individuals” of the sentence, according to MLive.
At the time of the fatal 2020 incident, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer had an executive order in place requiring all store employees and customers to wear face coverings because of the surging COVID-19 virus.
Sharmel and her daughter arrived at the Family Dollar in northern Flint around 1:40 p.m. on May 1. Though Sharmel was wearing a mask, her daughter was not, according to a prior press release from Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton.
Munerlyn, 43, did not let the mother-daughter pair enter the store because they would have been violating the mandate.
When Munerlyn told Sharmel to leave the store and asked the cashier not to serve her, Sharmel allegedly began yelling and spitting at the guard before driving off.
About 20 minutes later, Sharmel’s husband and son arrived at the store, where Bishop shot Munerlyn in the back of the head.
Police arriving at the scene found Munerlyn “laying on the floor unconscious and bleeding from his head.” He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Leyton said in a statement at the time that Munerlyn was simply doing his job, calling the security guard’s death “senseless and tragic.”
Munerlyn’s wife previously told MLive.com that he’d worked in security for almost 30 years and had been employed at the Family Dollar for about a year before he was killed.
A GoFundMe campaign launched for Munerlyn’s family has raised almost $415,000 as of Jan. 18.
The page describes Munerlyn as “a hard-working father and husband who lost his life while doing his job securing the place of business and asking all customers to wear a mask for our own safety as well as others.”
We have zero remorse for this family.
