Jewelers Row kidnapper who cooperated gets 12-year sentence
From the window of his cell in the Federal Detention Center in Center City, Khayree Gay can see the parking lot several blocks away where he made the decision that derailed his life.
From the window of his cell in the Federal Detention Center in Center City, Khayree Gay can see the parking lot several blocks away where he made the decision that derailed his life.
There, nearly a year ago, he and two other men dragged a 54-year-old Jewelers Row shop clerk into his van in a plot to rob her store. They bound her with zip ties and beat her. They Tasered her at least seven times while threatening her life. Their assault has left the woman permanently injured and afraid to leave her house.
Addressing a federal judge Monday as he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, Gay said he could offer no explanation for his actions, only remorse and a desperate desire to try to make things right.
"I was not a man that day. I was a monster," he said. "I deserve any punishment that is handed down to me."
Gay, 31, was the last defendant to be sentenced in a kidnapping case that U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III has described as among "the most heinous crimes I have seen on my 25 years on the bench."
But because of his deep remorse and extensive cooperation with federal authorities, the judge said, Gay deserved a less-severe punishment than his codefendants.
Bartle sentenced Salahudin Shaheed, who was behind the abduction, to 30 years in prison last month. Basil Buie, the other codefendant, received a 15-year sentence in January.
"This case is serious - it's horrific, it's violent, and it's beyond the pale of what this court usually sees," Gay's lawyer, Nina Spizer, said Monday. "But he did what he could to make this right. He gave the people up who did this, and made sure they were prosecuted and sent to jail for a very long time."
In fact, prosecutors told the court, Gay's cooperation began from the moment agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested him in South Carolina only days after the botched robbery. So did his contrition.
"It got to the point that he was crying so hard and for so long [during interviews with agents] that our discussions were becoming unproductive," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan said.
Once Gay gained control of his emotions, he walked authorities through the crime.
Under Shaheed's direction, he told them, they snatched the woman as she left National Watch & Diamond Exchange, 101 S. Eighth St., after work last April 4. They shoved her into Gay's van and began torturing her to get her to give up the codes to the store's safe.
When it became clear that she didn't know the codes, the three robbers began arguing, Linehan said Monday. Shaheed had planned to drive the woman to Maryland. But Gay said he put his foot down, and the robbers dropped the woman off at a graveyard in Upper Darby where one of his relatives was buried - a spot he figured would be safe.
There, she managed to flag down a passing motorist. But in the months since, her recovery has been slow, her husband told the court.
Gay's lawyers said Monday that their client, too, had suffered extreme consequences for his cooperation with authorities. He was beaten in prison with a lock shoved into a sock. The mother of his three children had to move after the family began receiving threats.
But before U.S. marshals led him out of the courtroom, Gay turned around to address his victim's husband face-to-face.
"I take full responsibility for my stupidity, my greed, and my actions that day," he said, receiving a slight nod from the man in return. "I wasn't raised that way."
Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported that Khayree Gay was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The actual term is 12 years.
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