'Hole in our hearts': Beltzhoover man sentenced for shooting death of 3-year-old girl

Chassity Clancy was just 3 years old, but she brightened every room she entered.

She loved Barbies and the song, “Let It Go.”

She liked to play with hair grease — but hated having her hair done.

“She could make you laugh and smile just the way she looked at you,” wrote her cousin, Khier Livsey, 12, in a victim impact statement. “When she was taken from our family, it was like our joy and sweetness was gone.”

Chassity was killed on Feb. 9, 2020, when a shotgun went off, hitting her in the neck.

Marlin Pritchard, 52, of Beltzhoover, pleaded guilty in March to third-degree murder and an additional count for illegal possession of a firearm.

On Thursday, he was sentenced by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kelly Bigley to serve 14 to 30 years in prison.

“Talking about this tragedy is reliving it,” said another cousin, Khiera Livsey. “She was our baby.”

She said helping write an obituary and picking out a dress for Chassity to be buried in was the hardest thing she ever had to do.

“This man has truly damaged our hearts for a lifetime.”

On Feb. 9, 2020, Pritchard’s girlfriend, Veronica Anglin had been watching Chassity and another girl at Pritchard’s East Warrington Avenue home. She put the girls in bed, and then she laid down, as well, about 9 p.m.

When Pritchard got home, he laid down with his head on her hip and fell asleep. He had the sawed-off shotgun under his pillow.

About 1 a.m., the shotgun went off, and Chassity was struck in the right side of her neck.

Pritchard immediately started screaming, ‘I killed her, I shot her, it’s my fault,’” Deputy District Attorney Stephie Ramaley told the court in March.

Pritchard later told police in an interview that he went to bed with the shotgun for protection after he’d been threatened a day earlier.

At Thursday’s hearing, Pritchard apologized to Chassity’s family, telling the judge that he felt like the little girl was part of his own family.

“Words can’t express the pain and the anguish I’ve inflicted on this family,” he said. “I’m so sorry this tragedy happened.

“I just hope God finds a way to console and comfort the family.”

Defense attorney George Saba told Bigley that his client immediately took responsibility for the shooting and never shied from that.

“A community has been broken by the death of a child,” Saba said. “There is nothing that can be done to bring her back or heal the hurt.”

Saba called what happened “unthinkable.

“It was a mistake,” he said. “It was an accident.”

Ramaley disagreed.

“The commonwealth does not view this case as an accident,” she said. “The level of recklessness that occurred in this incident rises to the level of malice.

“It may not have been an intentional shooting, but it was a malicious shooting.”

Chassity’s family urged Bigley to give Pritchard the maximum possible sentence.

“It has left a hole in our hearts that can never be filled, said her great, great aunt, Thelma Grace.

Watching what Chassity’s mother, Chantell Brooks, has had to endure has been awful for their close-knit family.

“The pain is just unbearable,” Brooks told the court, her 14-year-old daughter, Winter, by her side.

Bigley, who was tearful throughout the hearing, paused as she looked at pictures of Chassity.

“Tragedy doesn’t seem a sufficient word for such a beautiful, innocent child,” she said.

Bigley noted not only Brooks’ suffering at the loss of her daughter, but too, the guilt she must feel at leaving Chassity at Pritchard’s home that night.

She called his actions reckless.

“The defendant’s actions just can’t be undone. It’s simply horrific,” Bigley said. “I’m sure what the family wants is that every day when you wake up, and every night when you go to sleep, you think about this child.”