A 17-year-old youth was sentenced today to six years in adult prison in the unintentional shooting death of a teenage girl at a South Side house. Tayon Dunson was 15 when he shot 17-year-old Shevona N. Whitehead in the chest while handling a gun at his home in the 1200 block of South Champion Avenue on July 21, 2014.

One day before she would have turned 18, Shevona N. Whitehead was killed by a fellow teen who was mishandling a gun at a South Side house.

Tayon Dunson, 17, expressed remorsefor his actions in a brief statement to the girl's family Thursdayin a Franklin County courtroom.

"It wasn't intentional," Dunson said. "I just want to apologize."

Common Pleas Judge Kim Brown sentenced him tosix years in adult prison. He will be released in less than five years because he was credited with the time he has been incarceratedsince his arrest in the July 21, 2014 incident.

He pleaded guilty last month to reckless homicide with a gun specification and illegally possessing a gun.

Dunson was 15 at the time of the shooting, buthis case was transferred to adult court in March 2015 by aJuvenile Court judge who ruled that he was not amenableto treatment in the juvenile system. He was on probation at the time for delinquency cases of robbery and aggravated rioting and had a series of probation violations, including removing his electronic-monitoringdevice.

The victim's mother tried to make sense of theshootingas she addressed the judge Thursday.

"I understand that it was unintentional," Danielle Whitehead said."But an accident, to me, is a gun falling on the floor and it went off. But he did pull the trigger."

When the hearing ended, a female relative who was leaving the courtroom expressed her displeasure with the sentence."Six years for murder?"she said to the judge before sheriff's deputies escorted her to the hallway.

The maximum sentence for the offenses to which he pleaded was nine years.

Shevona Whitehead died at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center from asingle gunshot wound to her chest. She had been sitting on a bed inDunson's house in the 1200 block of South Champion Avenue withhim, her younger sister and another teenager.He pointed the gun at Whitehead and pulled the trigger to prove that is wasn't loaded, one of the witnesses told police.

Defense attorney Rebecca Goochsaid her client tried to remove the shells from the gun as he sat on the bed "and thought it was unloaded. Unfortunately, it was not."

@johnfutty