Father of Murdered Christian Teen Explodes on Daughter's Killer for Taunting Family in Court
A grieving father struggling to forgive a serial killer who took the life of his devout Christian daughter exploded in an Ohio court Thursday after the killer taunted him.
Just moments after a judge issued a death sentence for Ohio serial killer Michael Madison, 38, on Thursday, Van Terry, the grieving father of 18-year-old Shirellda Terry who Madison murdered, pounced on the killer like a provoked lion ready to eliminate a threat.
A YouTube video of the incident, shows Van Terry approaching the podium and introducing himself to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy McDonnell who had just minutes earlier sentenced Terry to death for the brutal murders of Shirellda and two other women.
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"Right now, I guess we're supposed to, in our hearts forgive this clown, who has touched our families, taken my child," Terry said in the video.
The distraught father then paused and turned to look at Madison, who was sitting behind the defense table and in a split second he ran toward the killer and lunged at him over the table and grabbed at his face as a woman screamed "no, no" off camera.
Courtroom deputies wrestled the father away from the convicted killer who did not appear to be injured.
Van Terry later told Fox 8 of the incident that he knew he just "wanted" Madison after he smiled at him while he tried to address the court.
"He looked at me and smiled," Terry said. "I thought that was so disrespectful."
"I was thinking how he mutilated my child, cut my child. You did all this while my child was still alive, so you caused my baby great pain. I don't know if I thought about leaping or what have you, I just know I wanted him," he said.
Terry's family also agreed that Madison provoked him by laughing.
"He was upset. He's telling you that he lost his baby, that's a slice of his Heaven, and (Madison) is sitting over there smiling," Van Terry's sister, Sonya Richardson, told Cleveland.com. "It's like, enough."
"The family is there pouring out their hearts ... and he's sitting there smiling ... which caused my brother to launch at him," Sonya Richardson, Terry's aunt, told WGRZ.
"It was horrible ... to be that close ... to have to breath his air...to be in the same room with a person who is so horrible ... and he don't care ... he was laughing when she gave him the death penalty," Richardson added.
A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor said the office will review the incident and decide if Van Terry will be charged with a crime.
Madison was sentenced to death for the 2013 killings of 38-year-old Angela Deskins, 28-year-old Shetisha Sheeley, and 18-year-old Shirellda. The bodies of the women were found in July 2013 near the East Cleveland apartment building where Madison lived. Madison confessed to police that he strangled two of the women but couldn't remember killing the third.
A jury recommended the death penalty for Madison Thursday and Judge McDonell agreed even though she could have sentenced him to life in prison without parole. The nature of his crimes she argued did not earn him that grace.
"In coming to my decision today, I am struck by the sheer inhumanity of what one human being can do to not one, but three human beings. It is incomprehensible," McDonnell told Madison of her decision Thursday. "People who commit the kind of crimes that you have committed must be punished, and must be punished as severely as the law allows. It is absolutely necessary."
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty agreed that the death penalty was fitting punishment for Madison.
"This man is evil, he is a personification of it," McGinty said, according to Cleveland.com. "The sentence will not bring back the victims, but in the future, when other cold-blooded criminals do their cost benefit analysis, they will know that death is in the equation for them.
This is the first time McDonnell, who has been on the bench in Cuyahoga County since 1995, has sentenced someone to death, according to Cleveland.com. Executions in Ohio are currently on hold as the Ohio Department of Corrections struggles to find the drugs they need to for lethal injection.
Shirellda Terry who went missing on July 10, 2013, was described by family members as a deeply religious 18-year-old who never missed Bible study or church.
It is unclear if Madison will ever have Van Terry's forgiveness but Shirellda's mother, Pastor Belinda Minor, forgave him from the courtroom podium, but did not express any reservation about his death sentence, said Cleveland.com. She further told WLTX 19 that she was glad the trial is over.
"I'm extremely grateful that this three years is over. I'm grateful that seven weeks of trial ... he does not deserve to have a name at this time," she said of Madison.
