Man is sentenced for role in shooting

'God will deal with him,' the victim's sister says of assailant.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The sister of a man killed in a robbery says she doesn't comprehend why the teenagers who attacked him were armed.
She also doesn't understand why they felt the need to shoot her brother and his companion.
"I don't understand this generation -- why they have to use guns. Do they think it makes a man out of them to take a life?" asked Julia Conner, of Butler, Pa.
Conner spoke by telephone just after a 19-year-old Jacobs Road man was sent to prison for 18 years Wednesday for his role in a robbery and shooting that left her only brother, Ralph Miller, dead, and another man wounded.
Alonzo Thigpen drew 10 years for complicity to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Miller, 53, of East Wood Street; five years for the attempted murder of Charles Glenn, 44, of Glenwood Avenue, who was shot in the face; and three years for using a firearm, for a total of 18 years.
Two five-year aggravated-robbery terms are to be served simultaneously with sentences on the other charges. Thigpen will get credit for the 534 days he's already been jailed.
2005 robbery
Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court imposed the sentence. Thigpen, who apologized to the judge for his crimes, had earlier pleaded guilty to the charges that stemmed from a Sept. 8, 2005, robbery of the two men on Nelson Avenue. Glenn has since died of natural causes, said Prosecutor Robert Andrews.
"The way I look at it, it'll never bring my brother back no matter how many years he gets," Conner said. "God will deal with him," she said of Thigpen.
"You're a young man. Take advantage of the time you're in prison. Get an education," Judge Sweeney told Thigpen after sentencing him.
Thigpen's cousin and accomplice, Durral L. Justice, 18, also of Jacobs Road, awaits trial on the original charges of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and two counts of aggravated robbery with gun specifications. Andrews said Justice shot Miller, and Thigpen shot Glenn.
Another trial
As for Justice, Conner said, "I hope he gets longer than 18 years." Conner said Justice shot Miller in one leg, then the other and then in the back of the head. "Why did he have to kill him? It was senseless," Conner added. "They killed him for nothing," she said, noting that the robbers didn't even take the 12 Miller had on him.
"He was only 16 years old at the time. It makes you sick to think what the world's coming to -- 16-year-olds taking lives," Conner said of Justice, who awaits trial as an adult. "You're not supposed to hate, and I know that. How can you not hate somebody that took your brother away from you?" she asked.
Thigpen and Justice approached Miller and Glenn as they sat in a pickup truck outside the home of an elderly couple, where Miller was a caregiver for a 92-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease, police reports said. The pair sat in the truck to smoke because they didn't want to smoke in the house, Conner explained.
The day before his death, Miller told Conner, who has cancer, that he was considering moving closer to her residence so he could help her with her chores, Conner said. "I need my brother more today than I ever did," she added.
milliken@vindy.com