An Anaheim man was sentenced today to life in state prison without the possibility of parole for stabbing a 31-year-old Garden Grove man to death over a drug-deal dispute.
Johnathan Allen Kincaid, 23, who had fled to Las Vegas after the July 29, 2009, murder, was convicted in February of felony special circumstances murder in the commission of robbery, with the jury also finding true a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a deadly weapon.
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Kincaid met Tayroh Stinson in Garden Grove and, after getting into a dispute about purchasing marijuana, the killer stabbed the victim multiple times with a knife. Stinson died at the hospital.
Johnathan Allen Kincaid Convicted of Killing Tayroh “Shawn” Stinson
After fleeing to Las Vegas, Kincaid was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service on an unrelated warrant on Sept. 4, 2009. He waived extradition and was transported to Orange County, where he was arrested by the investigating Garden Grove Police Department.
Stinson's fiance, Crystal Asher, and her mother, also named Crystal Asher, told Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg how Stinson's death has affected them, according to a City News Service report.
Stinson and his live-in girlfriend met when they were teenagers and had a son together. Stinson's girlfriend said their son, who has autism, struggles without his father. “It's bad enough that Shawn is dead. I am now left with a beautiful son who struggles with learning disabilities and always feels like the ugly ducking at school when they have Father's Day events, and he feels so left out and sad that he has no dad to be with him at these events. Our son misses his dad picking him up from school every day. The sparkle our son used to have in his eyes is gone.''
Kincaid's sentence gives the family “some closure, but it will never be full closure,'' said the elder Asher. “We struggle every day, especially my daughter.'' She's comforted that Kincaid will never win parole because he reminds her of “Charles Manson or a Charles Manson follower,” adding: “If he gets out he'll do it again.”
She disapproved of her son-in-law selling pot, but she called him “a fantastic guy'' who was “like a son to me.'' She was reportedly trying to find him a job before he was killed.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.