Homeless Attacker: "I Wasted A Human Life, I Had No Right"

by Shannon Moriarty

Published October 24, 2008 @ 12:04PM PST

Seventeen.

That's how old Thomas Daugherty was on the night he brutally attacked Norris Gaynor, a man who was homeless at the time in Miami, by brutally beating him with a baseball bat.

That's also the number of "I'm sorrys" Daugherty tearfully uttered during his sentencing trial yesterday, where he received life in prison. (View his emotional statement here.)

Reporter Michael Mayo of the Sentinel Sun was in the courtroom throughout the trial and yesterday, when Daugherty was sentenced to life in prison:

By the time Thomas Daugherty shuffled to the witness stand in shackles on Thursday, his dysfunctional life had already been laid bare for all the world to see. It was a harrowing, gut-wrenching day, as emotional as any I'd seen in any courtroom.From his father, we heard about the mother who abandoned him at 2, more concerned about a life of partying than her son.

From his aunt, we heard how Thomas was used as a human ping-pong ball between warring spouses long after divorce, how Thomas went from physical and emotional abuse in his father's South Florida home to no boundaries at all with his mother in Tennessee. His mother drank, smoked pot and took crystal methamphetamine with her son.

...From his mother, we heard about the emotional abuse she took from her husband when she was pregnant with Thomas, then about her devolving life of alcohol and drugs. She spoke of the night in 2005 she found Thomas crawling on the floor, looking for a piece of crystal meth.

...All of this helped explain the senseless violence that came spilling out of an intoxicated Daugherty in the early morning hours of Jan. 12, 2006, when he fatally bashed in Norris Gaynor's skull with a baseball bat and injured two other homeless men in a string of attacks.

It didn't excuse it.

You can read the rest of the article here.