"Plymouth man sentenced to 18-20 years for shooting his son" by Rebecca Fiore Globe Correspondent May 21, 2015
A jury took just 30 minutes to convict a Plymouth man of shooting his 15-year-old son in 2012 when the teen was returning home from basketball practice, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Richard Panepinto, 58, was then sentenced by the judge to 18-20 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation.
During the six-day trial, the defense had contended that Panepinto was insane at the time of the shooting because of depression, paranoia, and loss of impulse control due to post-concussion syndrome, according to a press release from the Plymouth District Attorney’s office.
Prosecutors had argued that Panepinto intended to kill his son, Shawn, to exact revenge on Shawn’s mother, who had divorced Panepinto.
In the driveway of the family’s Plymouth home on Jan. 17, 2012, Panepinto shot at his son once from behind, striking his son’s backpack.
Panepinto fired a second gunshot, hitting his son in the lower abdomen and damaging his colon and kidney, prosecutors said.
Panepinto’s son, then a student at Plymouth North High School and a member of the freshman basketball team, collapsed on the front lawn of a neighbor’s house and asked if he was going to die, and if he could call his mother, a neighbor told the Globe at the time. The teen underwent surgery at the Boston Medical Center and survived.
After shooting his son, Richard Panepinto shot himself in the abdomen....
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