Inset: West Virginia State Police Sgt. Cory Maynard (West Virginia State Police). Background: Timothy Kennedy just before he learned he was convicted of murder and other charges (WCHS/YouTube).
A man in West Virginia has learned his fate for gunning down a state trooper and then standing over the victim as he struck him with the gun.
Timothy Kennedy, 32, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Tuesday, "along with additional consecutive sentences," the West Virginia Troopers Association announced on social media, attaching a news article from regional CBS affiliate WOWK.
The defendant was found guilty on May 18 of murder in the death of 37-year-old West Virginia State Police Sgt. Cory Maynard. Kennedy was also convicted of two counts of attempted murder in the first degree, disarming a law enforcement officer, and first-degree robbery.
As Law&Crime previously reported, on June 2, 2023, Maynard and multiple other troopers were called about a shooting. They responded to the 4200 block of Beech Creek Drive in Mingo County, a rural area in the southwestern part of West Virginia.
The sergeant was apparently at the end of his shift, and his colleague encouraged him not to go.
"I tried to tell Sgt. Maynard not to come," West Virginia State Trooper Jonathan Ziegler testified during the trial, per the area TV station. "I told him to go home. It was time for him to go home; I said, 'Go home,' and he said 'No, I'm coming.' … I said, 'I'm dropping over at Beech Creek. I love you.' He said, 'I love you, too.'"
Troopers responded to the area to find a then-39-year-old Benjamin Adam Baldwin shot. He was taken to a hospital and listed as in stable condition, but the shooter was still out there.
Ziegler recounted Kennedy showing "absolutely no mercy" for Maynard, shooting him "not once, but three times. He showed no mercy when he stood overtop of Cory and struck Cory with a gun. As if shooting Cory wasn't enough, he had to stand overtop of him and strike him."
Maynard — a husband and father of two — was pronounced dead.
At Kennedy's sentencing hearing on Tuesday, several of Maynard's family members addressed the defendant.
"You've been given over three years. You wouldn't give my Cory three seconds," Leslie Maynard, Cory Maynard's mother, said. "I see no fairness … I do not deserve what you have put me through … You not only murdered my son, you tore a piece of my heart out."
"Instead of saying 'no,' Timothy, he could have pulled the trigger, and then it would've been your funeral not his. But that wasn't my Cory," she added.
Kennedy has maintained that he was high on meth and hallucinating when he shot Maynard, adding that he couldn't remember what happened.
Patricia Bennett, Cory Maynard's sister, argued drugs "are an excuse" and "not a reason for murder." She also said she wished Kennedy had shown remorse for his actions.
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