Durham man pleads guilty to murdering apartment manager trying to stop drug sales
A Durham man was sentenced to up to 26 years in state prison on Thursday for killing an apartment manager who was working to clean up the community.
Shatique Skinner, 26, pleaded guilty in the fatal shooting of 52-year-old Fred Edgerton in 2015.
Skinner was sentenced to 21 to 26 years in prison as part of a deal with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a felon.
On May 18, 2015, officers responded to a shooting call at 8:41 a.m. at Oakley Square Apartments at 1835 Cheek Road. Officers found Edgerton, a manager at the complex, who had been shot in the parking lot. He died at the scene.
Edgerton was working to clean up the illegal drug trade at the apartment complex, assistant district attorney Mitchell Garrell said.
“Mr. Edgerton really was going above and beyond for what his duties were,” as a property manager, Garrell said.
Skinner was involved in the drug trade at the complex, Garrell said.
Previous conviction
Skinner’s attorney, Emilia Beskind, argued that her client has severe mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities.
Skinner takes responsibility for his actions, she said, “but he did it because he was manipulated and controlled by a group of people that took advantage” of his mental health problems and his low IQ.
Jail records indicate that Skinner was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, auditory and visual hallucinations and intellectual disabilities, Beskind said.
As a teen, Skinner was convicted of attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to commit that crime. He served four years and seven months in prison.
He was released when he was 20.
“No discharge plan was put in place. He was just let out,” Beskind said.
When he was released, his mother, his father, his sister and his brother were all in jail, she said.
Skinner was not taking medication to address his mental health because he wasn’t connected to any services, Beskind said. He camped out in the abandoned house where he used to live and was vulnerable to people in the community with whom he wanted to hang around, Beskind said.
Danielle Edgerton-Grissom, Edgerton’s daughter, said she feels like Skinner is trying to explain away her father’s killing by pointing to his mental health issues.
“Which half the country [has], but we’re not murdering people and chasing them around the apartment [complex] and gunning them down and taking them from the whole community and their whole family,” she said.
If you need mental health treatment, then get help in prison, she said.
“For as long as you can be there,” she said. “Because you are not doing anybody good out here if all you are doing is chasing people down and kill a very good man.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2019 at 5:54 AM.
