CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man featured in the 2018 season of the popular true-crime podcast Serial was sentenced Monday to 26 years in prison for shooting two people and trying to shoot a Cleveland police officer during a 2017 crime spree.

A judge in Cuyahoga County imposed the sentence on 22-year-old Davon Holmes after Holmes apologized to his victims, including an 18-year-old man who almost lost his leg and a woman who lost her job after a bullet pierced her back.

Holmes had a message for his family as deputies led him from the courtroom.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

"We’ll be here,” one of them answered.

Common Pleas Court Judge William T. McGinty could have sentenced Holmes to anywhere between 22 and 30 years in prison. Holmes struck a plea deal with prosecutors last month and pleaded guilty to a host of felony charges, including felonious assault, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and weapons charges, in connection with five separate crimes.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said that the community will be safer with Holmes behind bars.

“Few criminals are as violent and dangerous as Davon Holmes,” O’Malley said.

Holmes made headlines in November 2015 when Cleveland police and city prosecutors charged him with aggravated murder in the 2015 drive-by shooting death of six-month-old Aavielle Wakefield. Cuyahoga County prosecutors dropped the charges against Holmes after he spent a year behind bars. He was released in November 2016.

The Serial podcast featured the case on an episode of its third season, which examined the justice system in Cleveland.

Less than seven months after his release, Holmes launched the crime spree that ultimately led to his most recent prison sentence.

Shot to the leg

Holmes was part of a trio of men, including Jonathan Wilson, who robbed 18-year-old Eron Strong, on June 1, 2017 shortly after the man left a Kinsman Road gas station. Strong stopped at the station to buy cigars on his way home and had $400 cash from his landscaping job.

Holmes robbed Strong a few minutes after he left the store, then shot him in the leg after he handed over his cash. Holmes hopped back into the car with his friends and then sped away. The man would later tell police that he recognized Holmes from his childhood.

Wilson and the other man ran away.

Strong spent more than a month in the hospital where doctors removed a bone in his lower leg and replaced it with a metal rod. He posted a picture of his wound on Instagram, and detectives found a screenshot of that photo on Holmes’ cellphone after his arrest four months later.

The man’s mother, Ebony Strong, said she knew Holmes and the other two men who nearly killed her son, and said their betrayal left her unable to trust anyone.

“I thought I was going to lose my son,” the mother said in court Monday.

Wilson pleaded guilty to a robbery charge and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Shooting into the car

Holmes opened fire on Brittany Baker’s car Aug. 18, 2017 as she drove along Union Avenue at East 123rd Street. Her 6-year-old and 9-year-old children were in the backseat of her car. One of the bullets almost struck the 9 year old and struck Baker in the lower back. The bullet ravaged the organs in her abdomen before he exited her stomach.

Surveillance camera video from a liquor store at the same corner showed Holmes buying something at the counter. A semi-automatic pistol with an extended-clip could be seen in the video sticking out of his waistband, prosecutors said.

Baker lost her job as a trauma counselor for children after the shooting. She cried during the sentencing hearing as she lifted the front of her shirt to expose her scar. She said she never dreamed that she would have to use her training on her own children after they watched her nearly die.

“My children should have never witnessed their mother almost being taken from them,” she said.

Shooting at police

On Oct. 1, Holmes and Dion Harris busted into the home of another Cleveland man, prosecutors said. The two tied him up and held him at gunpoint. Holmes and Harries left a stolen car blaring music outside the house. A neighbor called police to complain and officers went to the house and knocked on the door.

Holmes bolted out the backdoor and fired off a shot at police as they gave chase, prosecutors said. He managed to escape.

Phones lead to other crimes

Officers found two cellphones in the stolen car left running in the driveway. One of them belonged to Holmes, and the other to Harris, they said. Evidence on Holmes’s cellphone, including pictures, videos and GPS location data, tied Holmes to both of the other shootings, as well as the exact time and address of an Sept. 29 home invasion in Garfield Heights, prosecutors said.

Holmes and another man, who prosecutors say was also Harris, burst into a home while a husband and wife were asleep and held them at gunpoint for 30 minutes as they carried more than 60 guns out of the house, prosecutors said.

Holmes was arrested on Oct. 17, 2017, when police stopped an SUV and three men ran from the truck. Police found a loaded 9mm pistol with an extended magazine in the car, according to records.

Harris has pleaded not guilty to burglary, robbery and felonious assault charges tied to both home invasions.

Another man, Marvin Ray, pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property in the Oct. 1 home invasion and was sentenced last year six months of probation.

Aavielle Wakefield arrest

Police identified Holmes in November, after Aavielle became the third – and youngest -- child bystander in a month’s time to be gunned down in a drive-by shooting. The six-month-old was strapped in a car seat in the back of her father’s Oldsmobile in November 2015, when someone opened fire on the car from another car on East 154th Street.

A bullet pierced the back door and the baby’s chest.

But prosecutors dropped the charges after Holmes’s defense attorney filed a motion to suppress the only evidence that tied Holmes to the shooting, an eyewitness identification from a landscaper who was working near the crime scene.

The landscaper took more than a month to identify Holmes from a photo lineup after seeing his picture several times and passing over it at least once, according to court records.

Holmes told Serial’s host, Sarah Koenig, in an interview that he did not shoot Aavielle, and that he was on the way to straightening out his life when he was arrested.

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