Ohio City CMHA Shooting

Police found 22-year-old transgender woman Brittany Stergis shot dead inside her car on West 25th Street in December. Friday, Delshawn Carroll, 20, pleaded guilty to her murder, and was sentenced to 18 years to life in prison.

Delshawn Carroll

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A 20-year-old man could spend life in prison after he pleaded guilty Friday to the December slaying of a transgender woman outside a West Side public housing complex.

A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge sentenced Delshawn Carroll to 18 years to life after he admitted to gunning down 22-year-old Brittany Stergis inside her Buick at the Lakeview Estates apartments on West 25th Street Dec. 6.

Police found Stergis dead, with a gunshot wound to the head, about 2:30 a.m.

While the motive for the shooting remains unclear, prosecutors said Carroll and Stergis had a past together.

At first, Carroll denied being with Stergis the night of her death. But investigators found evidence that placed Carroll inside Stergis' car, prosecutors said.

Cleveland police homicide detectives pulled touch DNA that matched Carroll's from Stergis' car door handle and a cigar wrapper found inside her car. Cellphone records showed Carroll called Stergis earlier that night, and his phone pinged from a nearby tower.

Ballistics testing revealed that shell casings found inside Stergis' car matched a 9 mm Smith & Wesson handgun owned by one of Carroll's family members, prosecutors said.

Carroll was arrested on unrelated drug charges in April during the murder investigation. Police said he had less than 5 grams of cocaine, $22 and a cell phone at the time of the arrest.

Two months later, while Carroll was in Cuyahoga County Jail awaiting trial, police arrested Carroll in Stergis's killing.

Carroll also pleaded guilty to drug trafficking Friday. He will serve his 18-month sentence alongside his possible life sentence.

The case was originally set to go to trial Oct. 14.

Stergis' family still called her by her birth name of Laron Kidd, but said they accepted her as transgender. She was preparing to attend cosmetology school at Cuyahoga Community College, her mother Lynette Kidd said.