Man gets 18 months to 8 years for fatal shooting at Palms

The gun was supposed to be a prop for a rap video. But there was a bullet in the chamber, and when a scuffle erupted inside a suite at the Palms, Evan Plunkett wound up dead.

The gunman, Jim Johnson, of Las Vegas, told a judge during his sentencing hearing Tuesday that the shooting was “truly an accident.”

The 26-year-old said he loved Plunkett “like a brother.”

Defense lawyer Bill Terry said Johnson was trying to intervene in a fight on the 34th floor of the Fantasy Tower and slap a bottle out of Plunkett’s hand when the handgun discharged.

Immediately after the May 15 shooting, “he panics and he runs and he leaves,” Terry said, but by the end of the night Johnson wanted to turn himself in to police. Johnson went to his lawyer’s office the next day.

Prosecutor Shanon Clowers even called Johnson “very contrite” and pointed out that Johnson turned over both guns that he owned — a Sig Sauer P229 9mm pistol and a Glock 23 .4-caliber handgun.

On Tuesday, Johnson’s friends and family packed one side of the courtroom, while Plunkett’s sat on the opposite side.

“They keep saying it was an accident,” Plunkett’s older brother, Thomas “TJ” Plunkett, said after the hearing. “It was not an accident.”

Thomas Plunkett told police that he was fighting with Richard Moore on a patio near the suite’s pool when he heard a gunshot and saw his brother lying on the ground, the report stated.

Plunkett later told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was pistol-whipped in the back of the head by Johnson, and the gun fired. After Evan Plunkett was shot, Johnson punched the elder brother in the face, fracturing his right cheek bone.

“TJ, I’ve been shot,” Evan Plunkett said.

The 25-year-old lay bleeding on the floor of the suite, with his brother by his side, while many of the 50 other people inside the suite ran for the door along with Johnson.

In requesting probation, defense lawyer Bill Terry said Johnson was “like a puppy dog” and a “kind individual.”

“He will live for the rest of his life with the nightmare and the dreams of reliving this experience,” Terry said. “Whether you give him probation or you give him incarceration, those dreams won’t end.”

Clowers called the shooting “one of the most unusual murder cases I’ve ever had the opportunity to work on.”

The prosecutor had asked District Judge Jennifer Togliatti for a sentence of four to 10 years in prison.

At the time of the shooting, Johnson was on probation for possession of marijuana. In September, Johnson pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and a drug charge.

The judge, however, said she would not give Johnson the maximum penalty for the killing.

“You had a couple times to get a reality check that your choices were not the best,” Togliatti said. “But there’s nothing that disputes this was an accident with very poor decision making. I think you need a message that the repeated contacts with the law as a result of your drugs have consequences.”

She handed down a sentence of 18 months to eight years in prison.

After the judge announced the sentence, some seated on Johnson’s side of the courtroom cried, others started clapping and one man shouted.

“Go and walk that off, bro,” the man said. “Go and do it, bro. Walk that off, bro. Walk that off, bro.”

Evan Plunkett’s mother, Holly Plunkett, folded herself in the arms of her living son.

“Evan did not get his day in court,” she said.

Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker