Two men convicted in a 2022 Covington shooting that grew out of a fight between teenage girls were each sentenced to 20 years in prison, after a crowd of dozens watched the brawl spiral into gunfire that left three children wounded and one teenage girl permanently paralyzed.
Thomas Brown and Taquan Estes were found guilty of three counts each of felony assault, endangerment and riot, according to WLWT. The station reports that Kenton County prosecutors had sought the maximum possible prison terms for both men, describing the accusations against them as horrific. Estes was 17 at the time of the shooting and was charged as an adult, per the same account.
According to prosecutors, the violence began as a fistfight between two teenage girls, with other people accompanying one of the girls from her home to the other girl's home knowing a fight was planned. A video shown in court, per prosecutors, captured the brawl unfolding in a Covington alley between 16th and 17th streets, and the footage reportedly showed dozens of children gathered to watch. Kenton County Commonwealth's Attorney Rob Sanders said the fistfight quickly developed into chaos as people joined in, and that the men turned a fight between girls into a gun fight.
Gunfire Erupts as Crowd of Children Watches
Police said both Brown and Estes fired handguns during the melee and shot at one another, though investigators said at the time that it was too early to tell whose rounds struck which victims, according to FOX19. Brown himself was shot in the crossfire. Three children were hurt in the shooting, and the station reported at the time that the wounded included juveniles ages 11, 14 and 17, along with 41-year-old Brown — though a separate FOX19 report on the women later charged in the case described the injured children as a 7-year-old boy, an 11-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. WLWT's account of the sentencing similarly describes the other injured children as ages 7 and 11.
The 14-year-old girl was in critical condition at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center immediately after the shooting, the station reported. Sanders said one teenage girl will spend her life in a wheelchair because of what the defendants did, and WLWT's report on the sentencing confirms that one of the children was left permanently wheelchair-bound. Prosecutors said it was a miracle that no one was killed in the chaos.
Two Women Plead Guilty to Riot Charges
Two women were also charged in connection with escalating the fight that preceded the shooting, and both later pleaded guilty to one count of riot each, per WLWT's reporting. One of those women, identified in earlier FOX19 coverage as the mother of some of the injured children, remained defiant even after entering her plea, telling the outlet, “I'm a victim's mother.”
The 2022 shooting fit into a troubling pattern local hospitals were already tracking. Cincinnati Children's Hospital treated five children for gunshot wounds in just the first two months of that year, according to a separate WLWT report. That same report noted the number of juvenile gunshot-wound patients at the hospital had doubled from 2019 to 2020 and remained nearly as high the following year.
Sanders said the sentencing sends a message that gun violence will be punished and that those responsible will be held accountable. The case remains a stark reminder of how quickly a schoolyard-style dispute among teenagers escalated into a shooting that permanently altered a child's life and sent two adults to prison for two decades each.
