Pleasanton Home Depot security guard Blake Mohs was shot and killed trying to thwart a shoplifting last April, and the two suspects involved have just pleaded guilty to knock a few years off their sentences.
It was a year ago last week when 26-year-old Pleasanton Home Depot security guard Blake Mohs was shot and killed during a shoplifting incident. And the Pleasanton Police Department was immediately able to name suspects; the shooter Benicia Knapps (32) and getaway driver David Guillory (31). But the Pleasanton PD had another shocking detail that Knapps and Guillory had a two-year-old in the car with them when they fired the shot that killed Mohs.
And today, a year and five days after Mohs was killed, KTVU reports that Knapps and Guillory have pleaded guilty and taken a plea deal in his killing, with Knapps taking a second-degree murder charge.
Mohs’s family had asked prosecutors to make the deal. “It’s us taking back something they stole. Because now with a plea deal, there is no appeal,” his mother Lorie Mohs told NBC Bay Area. “There is no years back in court. It’s done.”
And his father Eric Mohs told the station, “We decided we couldn’t put our family through the chaos, so release them and get some final closure is more important than a few extra years.”
As NBC Bay Area notes, Knapps’s plea deal takes her sentence from 25 years to life down to 19 years to life. Guillory, who drove the getaway car, will serve seven years (instead of a possible 16 years) for child endangerment, accessory to a crime, and evading law enforcement. They’ll be officially sentenced on June 6.
KTVU reminds us that Blake Mohs was an Eagle Scout who served as a Boy Scout leader as an adult, and was engaged to be married when killed.
Related: Pleasanton Home Depot Employee Shot and Killed When Confronting Shoplifter [SFist]
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