Mother of murder victim confronts killer before his sentencing

The mother of a murder victim lashed out at one of her son's three killers in court Thursday morning, telling the court she wished she could "place my hands around his little neck and pay him back for killing my son." "Phillip Tucker's only excuse for killing my son is that he is pure evil with no regard or respect for human life," Brenda Spreng said. "To me, Barry Spreng Jr.'s mother, he is a waste of human flesh and I have here to convey that message to Phillip Tucker because my son can't. "Phillip Tucker's legacy will always be that he is a murderer," she said, telling Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Mark Betleski's courtroom that Tucker "should be glad he is safe in prison" because she wanted to strangle him. "I will never forgive you. I will always hate you," she told Tucker. "May complete darkness and pain be yours the rest of your life. And I hope you suffer every day in your prison hell. Amen." Tucker, 25, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, theft and related specifications in Lorain County Common Pleas Court on Friday in connection with his role in the September 2018 murder of 38-year-old Barry Spreng Jr. of Oberlin. Judge Mark Betleski sentenced Tucker to 20 years in prison. A firearms specification and a school zone specification, totaling three years, will be served first and are mandatory prison time. Defense attorney Anthony Nici said he and his client and the Lorain County Prosecutor's Office came to an agreement on the 20-year sentence. Tucker has been in jail since September 2018. With credit for nearly four years of time he has spent in the Lorain County Jail awaiting trial and additional credits, he is likely to serve 15 to 15½ years behind bars, Nici said. Brenda Spreng said her son "left a legacy of always trying to be of help. He was a kind soul who did not deserve to die as he did. My son's legacy is that of kindness." Co-defendant Joshua Hohn, 23, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, theft and receiving stolen property in Betleski's court in June and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Hohn is serving his sentence at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution. His earliest possible release date is in June 2047, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Co-defendant Gloria Watton, 22, pleaded guilty to complicity to involuntary manslaughter, complicity to aggravated robbery, complicity to felonious assault and complicity to theft in Common Pleas Court in 2019. Her sentencing was delayed by Betleski until her co-defendants' cases were resolved. It had not been scheduled by the end of court business Thursday. In her second victim impact statement in less than two months, Brenda Spreng said she felt Hohn "actually took the coward's way out by stabbing my son to death." "After all there's no fighting chance with a knife. But Phillip Tucker played a little braver. He used his fists to beat my son to death. Such a cruel way to die, to be stabbed by one and beaten by another," she said. "Did they take turns? Did they laugh and enjoy it?" Brenda Spreng wondered. "I believe they did." "I will never get to hear Gloria Watton's witness testimony in a court of law, but I know in my heart she lured my son there that night and that Phillip Tucker and Joshua Hohn were waiting there to kill him," she said. "To say shame on all three of them for killing my son is an understatement and may all three of them rot in hell." "And I wish I had known my son was going there that night and what was planned out for him. For if I had known, I would have brought an army and Phillip Tucker, Joshua Hohn and Gloria Watton would have been dead instead of my son," Brenda Spreng said. She also said she was "sick of hearing about how traumatic childhoods are excuses for killing people." "If that was the case, half of the world, including myself, would be murderers," Brenda Spreng said. Hohn, Watton and Tucker killed Barry Spreng in the parking lot of the now-closed Windsor Elementary School in Elyria on Sept. 5, 2018. The trio almost immediately were named as suspects by Elyria police. Watton was arrested in Tennessee, but Hohn and Tucker stole Spreng's car and fled west. Tracked to Oklahoma by cellphone, they got into a high-speed chase with Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers, crashed the car at 100 mph outside Oklahoma City and were hospitalized, according to court records. All three were extradited to Ohio to face charges. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @DaveOBrienCT.