Man receives life sentence for killing mother of three

<p>One of two men accused of killing a woman whose body was found strangled and then burned was sentenced to life in prison.</p><p>Earnest Bussey, 22, pleaded guilty in the June death of Shanequa Carpenter in Richmond County Superior Court.</p><p>Bussey did not offer any reason why the 24-year-old mother of three was killed, said District Attorney Danny Craig.</p><p>"Can you stop to imagine how many lives you've ruined _ including your own?" Judge Duncan D. Wheale asked Bussey in sentencing him Monday.</p><p>Cardale D. Gibbons, 23, who also has been charged with murder, has pleaded not guilty and his trial is pending.</p><p>Carpenter's burned body was found by firefighters on June 6, two days after she disappeared. An autopsy found she was pregnant when she was killed.</p><p>Investigators believe the two suspects went to Carpenter's home, where she was strangled with two of her three children present in the same room, then stuffed into the back of her car and drove off.</p><p>"Mr. Bussey, I would like to know why you killed our child," Carpenter's grandmother Alice Carpenter asked Monday.</p><p>Family members told investigators that she left to go to a grocery store the afternoon of June 4 with her two children, ages 2 and 11 months. They never saw her again.</p><p>Motorists found Carpenter's babies later that night. A driver nearly ran over the 2-year-old, who had wandered into the middle of the street, Craig said.</p><p>Carpenter's mother, Leverne Henderson, said her only child had been taken away from her. Henderson said Carpenter was robbed of seeing her baby's first birthday, and of seeing her oldest son off to his first day of kindergarten.</p><p>"She's been robbed of so many things," Henderson said.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x2866890)</p>