Two men sentenced to life in prison for 2006 Somerville killing

September 30, 2008 05:40 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By John R. Ellement, Globe staff

Two men were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in Middlesex Superior Court today for the 2006 shoot death of a Worcester man just hours after his marriage proposal was accepted by his girlfriend.

Valentino Facey, 23, of Cambridge, and Walter Norris, 22, of Dorchester were convicted by a jury in the Woburn courthouse of first degree murder earlier this week for killing Bernard Johnson, 22, as they tried to rob him of a gold chain in Somerville.

Johnson and his then-fiance, Desire Pires, had stopped to share their good news with relatives and friends at a Linden street home that Facey and Norris were already visiting, according to Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr.'s office.

Facey waited for Johnson to leave and tried to rob him of the chain at gunpoint, but Johnson fought back. Norris left the party, also armed, and shot Johnson multiple times, killing him. Johnson's fiancee had left the party with Johnson and witnessed the attack on her future husband.

Johnson's fiancee was too angry and overwhelmed by grief to attend the sentencing hearing before Superior Court Judge Diane Kottmyer, and instead had her mother read a victim impact statement on her behalf.

Pires said she has been emotionally destroyed by the murder of Johnson, has found it difficult to function normally and feels as if she has been imprisoned as a result of the killing.

"I can only hope they are placed in the smallest cell possible with nothing to do -- but to think,' she wrote of the two convicted murderers. "So, like me, they can figure out how to get through to the next day...I hate them for taking Bernard's life and destroying mine.''

Tanika Fontenez, with whom Johnson had two children, said the siblings miss their father. "He was selfishly taken away from them forever,'' she said in a written victim impact statement.

Kottmyer sentenced the two men to the mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.