One jury acquitted the gunman of murder. A second convicted his unarmed girlfriend instead.

WEST PALM BEACH — Keosha Carn didn't kill 16-year-old Tamia Johnson, but she'll spend more time in prison than the gunman who did. Jurors convicted her of murder on Monday, May 20 after three women testified that Carn told her boyfriend to "shoot it up" during a fight in a West Palm Beach neighborhood.

Johnson, who sat in the back of her parents' car, was close enough to hear the sound of women screaming near 17th Street and Spruce Avenue. Her stepfather said it was too dark outside to see the commotion, but he could tell things were getting out of hand. He put the car in reverse at the same moment that a stray bullet struck his daughter in the head.

Were it not for Carn, jurors agreed, Johnson would still be alive.

Their verdict set the stage for a mandatory life sentence for Carn, a 32-year-old mother of five with no prior felony convictions. Her boyfriend, Larry Young, avoided that same fate last year after he convinced a different jury that Johnson's death was an accident. They convicted the 28-year-old man of manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

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Prosecutors still considered Carn an accessory to murder in the wake of Young's trial. Defense lawyer Mattie Fore said it would be unfair of state attorneys to try to convict Carn — "a pregnant woman who was by all accounts under threat, and who made a mere phone call at the very worst" — of first-degree murder after failing to do so to the actual gunman.

Circuit Judge Howard Coates disagreed. He's scheduled to sentence Carn to prison for murder and attempted murder on June 24. During the hearing, Assistant State Attorney Marci Rex will recount the details of Johnson's death on Dec. 10, 2021, a final time.

Family feud between gunman's girlfriend, her aunt led to fatal shooting

The teen's killer had fled from Pleasant City by the time West Palm Beach police officers arrived, but he left behind shell casings and an indistinct memory in the heads of sisters Shalontay Ashe and Latesha Lyman. They told investigators that they saw the man's gold-plated teeth illuminated by the muzzle flash of his gun.

Young, who Ashe and Lyman said Carn told to "shoot it up" minutes before the gunfire began, has gold teeth, too.

The sisters' statements set the trajectory for the investigation. Officers used nearby license-plate readers to confirm Young's presence during the shooting. While combing through his social media accounts, they found a photo of him posing with an assault rifle.

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Officers also confiscated Carn's cellphone after they said she began to delete the more than 30 calls she made to Young during the fight that precipitated the shooting. The fight arose from a dispute between her and Ashe, who is, in addition to the state's key witness, Carn's aunt.

Carn denied ever telling Young to open fire. Her defense attorney suggested that the feud between Carn and her aunt prompted Ashe and Lyman to invent the story they told police. However, a third woman with no relationship to the sisters also told jurors that Carn said Young was on the way to "shoot this s*** up."

"Unfortunately for Tamia Johnson and her family, Larry Young was not a good shot," Rex said at the conclusion of the weeklong trial.

Jurors deliberated for an afternoon before convicting Carn of all charges.

Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Woman to serve more time for teen's death than the man who killed her