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Moye sentenced to life for Waters’ death

Judge Livengood denies him parole

BEDFORD — In a courtroom filled with quiet supporters and his victim’s tearful friends and family, 18-year-old Deauntay Moye received a life sentence Friday for the 2015 murder of Stephanie Waters.

County Judge Travis Livengood denied Moye a chance for parole, all but ensuring he’ll spend the rest of his life in state prison. The sentencing concludes the nearly two-year investigation and court cases that followed Waters’ January 2015 shooting death in a Woodbury parking lot.

“Mr. Moye, unfortunately, has made too many bad decisions in his life,” Livengood said, even as he acknowledged Moye’s deeply troubled upbringing and willingness to take responsibility for Waters’ death.

Moye of Woodbury and fellow defendant Ryan Hardwick of Martinsburg, then 16 and 15 year old, met Waters in a parking lot to purchase marijuana. They had expected Waters’ boyfriend, hoping to shoot him and steal the drugs — but when Waters arrived instead, they moved forward with the plan.

Police and prosecutors said Moye pulled the trigger that day — leaving Waters, 21, to die slowly in the back seat of her own car as the teens drove around the area. The teens also shot Waters’ dog before later abandoning the car in a rural area.

“He shot you two times in the back of the head and never thought twice,” Waters’ mother, Sally Harr, said as she read a letter to her late daughter in the courtroom.

“As of today, my fight for justice is over,” Harr said. “Now I have to fight to keep your memory alive.”

Authorities had long described Moye as a leader of sorts, the dominant personality who urged Hardwick to join his plot to rob and kill. District Attorney Bill Hig­gins argued that he pleaded guilty to Waters’ murder only when he no longer had any other feasible option.

On Friday, however, acquaintances and Moye’s defense attorney, Chief Public Defender Karen Hickey, described a different young man. Growing up in Baltimore with an absent father and a home life riddled with problems, Moye worked as a “corner boy” for drug dealers and began using drugs and alcohol by age 10, Hickey said.

Already roped into gang life, Moye boasted of past crimes, claiming he and his friends fired guns and burned buildings down to pass the time. When his family moved to Woodbury, the intense culture shock undoubtedly weighed on his psyche, Hickey argued.

Marlene Reed, whose nephew befriended Moye, asked Livengood to consider the teenager’s humanity.

“The boy that I knew lost his way. Made a horrible mistake,” she said. “But to interpret his silence as cold-heartedness is not the Deauntay I knew.”

In a statement Hickey read aloud, Moye implored Waters’ family for forgiveness and assured those listening that he and his codefendant would change as the years pass.

“We’re going to grow old in prison. We’ll have to take classes and get a trade,” he wrote. “We’ll be men.”

Livengood said he recognized Moye’s willingness to take responsibility and believed his intention to improve his lot. But the judge argued that his threat to society remained too great to set him free.

He may have legally been a child at the time, Livengood said, but he was old enough to understand his actions. And the fact that he planned to carry out the murder suggests a more serious degree of sophistication, he said.

As the gunman, Moye’s sentence is harsher than Hardwick’s, who faces at least 60 years in prison before he gets a chance at parole. He faces lighter, concurrent sentences for lesser charges in the case.

Breaking openly into tears in the courtroom, Waters’ friends and family recounted the losses they’ve suffered since the 21-year-old’s murder — something they’ve had to do before as the case ground on. With the holiday season underway, they said, the pain of her absence is sharper.

“I know we all felt an absence,” her brother, Chance Harr, said of their family’s Thanksgiving. “We all felt there was one less person there, not sharing love and laughter. We all know that place can’t be filled.”

Mirror Staff Writer Ryan Brown is at 946-7457.

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