It was a volatile scene in a Miami-Dade courtroom Wednesday after a man convicted of shooting a high school teacher was sentenced to life behind bars.
Emotional relatives of 23-year-old Patrick Lively had to be escorted out of the courtroom after they began shouting at Circuit Court Judge Diane Ward, after Ward handed down the sentence.
"That's my only child left! That's my only son! Please!" Lively's mother said, as she collapsed to her knees weeping in the courtroom. "In the name of Jesus, just let me see him one time before I die, please just give me that sympathy!"
The mother was escorted out by deputies and two other female relatives were forced to leave the courtroom after emotional outbursts.
Lively had been convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder in the Nov. 6, 2007 shooting of Carol City High math teacher Sergio Miranda outside the school.
Police say Lively approached Miranda and a female colleague outside the school as they were returning from a lunch break. Lively demanded their wallets at gunpoint and the woman told him she didn't have one and ran away, but when Miranda began to walk away, he was shot in the back by Lively.
Miranda survived the gunshot to his lower back but four years later still needs a walker to get around.
Once the hysterical relatives were escorted out, Ward went back to handing down her sentence.
"What the system is going to do for you is make sure that you're never a free man in the streets of Dade County again," Ward said. You are an incredibly dangerous man, you have no care about human life, human suffering."
A woman identified as Lively's aunt had earlier made a tearful plea seeking leniency for Lively, who was 19 at the time of the shooting.
"He just needs some direction, he needs some guidance, he needs some love," the aunt said, as she described his troubled upbringing.
Miranda is now a tutor at Hialeah Gardens Elementary School.
