Teen sentenced in 2017 murder of college baseball player in online sales scheme
A Charlotte teenager was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with the possibility of parole after a jury found him guilty of killing a college baseball player he met after arranging to sell him a cellphone.
Jah’zion Wilson, 17, was found guilty of first-degree murder and attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon in the 2017 fatal shooting of 21-year-old Zachary Finch, according to a news release by the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office. Wilson was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon, prosecutors said.
Judge Forrest Bridges imposed the mandatory sentence in the case, according to the DA’s office release.
Finch was on a baseball scholarship and a year short of graduating from the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky when he went online to find a cellphone to buy in June 2017. He thought he found one on the marketplace app LetGo, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
He was fatally shot when he went to pick up the phone on Father’s Day near Clanton Road in southwest Charlotte.
Wilson was 15 when he killed Finch.
Two other people were involved in the killing. Police and prosecutors said they met Finch with the intention of robbing him, instead of selling him a phone.
In 2018, Demonte McCain, another suspect in the case, made an agreement with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon.
McCain, who awaits sentencing, admitted to being a lookout during the robbery and murder.
A juvenile also was charged in the killing.
“It’s terrible they preyed upon the good in humanity,” Finch’s mother, Tara Finch, told the Observer after McCain pleaded guilty. “Zachary believed in the good in everyone, because he was good. He thought everyone was like he was.”