’A life that had meaning’: Mom of teen shot last fall sees his friend sentenced to prison
A Wichita teen who fatally shot a friend driving in downtown in October in what police previously called “a targeted attack” has been sentenced to more than 13 1/2 years in prison.
Tyshon E. Jacques, during his sentencing hearing Friday, said in a letter read aloud by his attorney that he didn’t shoot 18-year-old Ja’Qualen Dupree intentionally. The gun in his hands went off as he was handling it, something he now wishes he hadn’t done, he wrote.
But that didn’t matter to Dupree’s mother, Kenyette Miles. Ever since her son’s death, she can’t sleep and needs treatment for anxiety.
Her son was “supposed to be a star,” and had people in the music industry interested in his work, she said choking back tears in court.
Those dreams were dashed when Jacques — a friend whom her son called “brother” and spent time at her home — shot Dupree from the back seat of Dupree’s Dodge Charger in the 400 block of North Broadway on Oct. 2, 2023.
“I truly thought he was a really nice guy, but I was deceived,” Miles said, adding that Jacques “deserves to spend a long time behind bars” so he can’t hurt anyone else.
“My son did not deserve this in any way,” she said. “.... Tyshon Jacques took a life that had meaning.”
Jacques, 19, wrote in his letter that he was sorry and that he wished he “could take the whole day back.”
His defense attorney, Randall Price, told Sedgwick County District Judge Jeffrey Goering the case was a tragic accident and the gun “simply went off.”
Wichita police Chief Joe Sullivan in October called the shooting, which garnered immediate public attention because it happened by the Robert D. Love Downtown YMCA, “a targeted attack that just happened to occur” near the facility but wasn’t tied to it in any way.
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The shooting was reported at 3:16 p.m. Police have said a person who called 911 saw a “slow-moving vehicle hit a pole and several people exiting the vehicle and running in different directions.”
Officers found Dupree unconscious and alone in the Charger with a gunshot wound. He died at a Wichita hospital.
Dupree’s mother, in an interview with The Eagle after the shooting, said Dupree had left their Wichita home in his Charger to pick up his younger brothers from school but agreed to give a group of acquaintances a ride on the way. Jacques, a longtime friend of Dupree’s, was one of the passengers.
He was arrested several blocks south, in the 500 block of South Broadway, police have said.
Jacques pleaded guilty in January to one count of second-degree reckless murder and one count of criminal possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. At the time of the shooting, he was on probation for burglarizing a convenience store, according to statements in court Friday.
Goering sentenced Jacques to 154 months in prison for the murder count and 9 months in prison for the weapons count. He ordered the terms to be served consecutively, or back to back, for a total of 163 months.
