By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Onalaska resident Ronald A. Brady will be sentenced on Wednesday morning following his conviction last week for fatally shooting a suspected burglar.
Brady, 60, argued self defense in his trial last week in Lewis County Superior Court. He avoided a first-degree murder conviction, but a jury of six men and six women found him guilty of second-degree manslaughter.
Judge Nelson Hunt did not order him into custody after the verdict on Friday evening, but had him return today to the courtroom in Chehalis to learn his sentencing date. He told Brady it would happen very soon after today.
Hunt this morning said sentencing should be next week.
Defense attorney Don Blair asked the judge if it could be held off until the end of July, as his client had his affairs to get in order before he goes to prison.
“We can do it on the sixth, or he can go into custody now,” Hunt said. “It was a big break for him not to go into custody that day.”
While the crime has a standard sentencing range of between 21 and 27 months, Brady faces an additional mandatory minimum of three years – with no possibility of reduction for any “good” time – because it was committed with a firearm.
Brady admitted firing five or six shots with a .22 caliber rifle, three of them toward 56-year-old Thomas McKenzie of Morton who was outside the house Brady owns and died at the scene.
The retired bachelor was acquitted of assault in the case of McKenzie’s wife, Joanna McKenzie who testified she that while she took cover behind a truck in the driveway, she heard the glass in its windshield shot out and felt “air or something” graze her face.
Hunt will sentence him at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
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Read “Breaking news: Onalaska murder trial: Guilty of second-degree manslaughter” from Friday June 24, 2011, here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter