YOUNGSTOWN — Samuel A. Richard, 33, of Palmer Avenue, pleaded guilty Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to the Oct. 16, 2020, murder of Keylan T. Davis, 32, on Compass West Drive in Austintown and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Judge John Durkin handed down the sentence, approving the recommended of prosecutors and the defense. Richard did not offer any statements before he was sentenced.

According to prosecutors, Richard has a child with a woman who lived in the Austintown apartments and was at her apartment with her Oct. 16, 2020. Davis, who was allegedly also seeing the woman, also went to the her apartment.

Prosecutors believe Richard was aware that Davis was on his way there. When Davis knocked on the door, Richard opened the door and opened fire on Davis, who then ran down the hallway with Richard chasing him, said Gina DeGenova, county assistant prosecutor. Davis died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office.

Richard fired at Davis as he chased him. Davis fell down the steps and ended up on the lawn outside of the apartment building, prosecutors said.

Richard pleaded guilty to murder, and prosecutors dismissed several other charges and specifications in the case, including aggravated murder. Richard gets credit for 741 days in the Mahoning County jail awaiting trial.

Part of Richard’s charges was a violent-offender specification filed as a result of Richard having been convicted of felonious assault in 2017 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. The specification was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

According to a witness and a 911 call sheet, Davis was shot in the throat about 9:50 a.m.

A witness said she heard shots and then saw Davis come out of the apartment building and eventually end up in the grass by the building. He was taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Prior to sentencing, Susan Ziegler, Davis’ mother told, Durkin that her son was “doing good. He never got the chance to be a father; he never got the chance to get married.”

“For someone to just take that all away from their child, it’s unexplainable. I wish this young man would not have made that choice,” she said. “To kill someone the way he killed my son, he shot my son in the back, your honor.”

She said that even though Richard took her son from her, “I still pray for this child. I just wish he would have made better decisions than what he did. It’s such a loss for me and my children, my mother. We depended on this boy. This boy was responsible.”

After the hearing, Ziegler said she is grateful for the “closure” the plea and sentencing brings. “I leave it in God’s hands for the rest,” she said.

“He was loved by everybody,” she said. “He didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that,” she said of her son’s death.

Richard’s sentence also was for an assault four days before the murder — Oct. 12, 2020 — near Richard’s home on Palmer Avenue on the South Side. Mike Yacovone, assistant county prosecutor, said in that Richard and his brother, Tillman E. Douglas, III, 32, also of Palmer Avenue, fired guns at females who were walking up the street to fight another group of females.

It resulted in Richard pleading guilty to one count of felonious assault with a gun specification in that case and a receiving a sentence of two to three years in prison. But that sentence was ordered to be served at the same time as the 15 years to life for the murder.

Douglas’ case is still pending, also before Durkin. Palmer was scheduled for trial Monday, but the plea agreement eliminated the trial. Douglas’ case has no trial date.