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player ready...A 19-year-old Gary man was sentenced on Wednesday to serve 55 years in prison in connection with the murder of a 36-year-old mother of seven children.
Jaron Starks Jr. stared straight ahead and appeared emotionless during the reading of his sentencing by Lake Superior Court Judge Gina Jones.
Jones gave Starks, who wore dark-rimmed glasses and a dark colored face mask, 45 years for murdering Jessica Lipscomb and an additional 10 years on gun enhancement charges.
Starks, his voice barely audible, stood stoically before Jones after she asked him if he wanted to give a statement.
“It hurts me the way this situation has turned out,” Starks said.
Before rendering her decision, Jones listened to attorneys for both sides and also took under advisement letters received from the family and friends of both Lipscomb and Starks.
Prosecuting attorney Paul Namie read emotional excerpts from letters written by both the fiancée and children of Lipscomb, whose ages now range from 23 years of age to 2.
“She was our mommy, our life,” Namie read from one of the letters.
“The two youngest children will grow up without memories of their mother,” Namie read from another letter.
Namie said Starks should be given 50 years on the murder charge and 12 years on gun enhancement.
He said Starks, who had a previous crime history of battery and armed robbery before killing Lipscomb, didn’t appear remorseful for what he had done in his apology at his previous court hearing. “His apology is like one from a politician,” Namie said.
Namie said Starks wasn’t a good candidate for rehabilitation and is a danger to society because of his actions.
“He should not be walking the streets again,” Namie said.
Starks’ attorney Jesse Harper argued that his client, on the day of the murder, was doing lawn work and felt threatened by Lipscomb.
He was not the attacker and at age 18, “just a kid,” Harper said.
Harper said he believes his client was remorseful about what he had done.
“I believe that he is remorseful and he wasn’t the antagonizer,” Harper said.
Harper said he also believes his candidate is the “perfect candidate for rehabilitation.”
He asked the judge to give his client 45 years on the murder charge and no time on the gun enhancement charge.
Jones, who took a short recess in her chambers before giving the sentencing, said that for her, it wasn’t the type of court day situation she wanted to go through.
“This is not something I want to deal with — a young person who is clearly intelligent and has the capacity to do things differently. It doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies at all,” Jones said.
But, at the base of his jury conviction, he shouldn’t have used a gun to shoot Lipscomb, Jones said.
“You can’t kill someone for yelling at you…You weren’t supposed to have a gun,” Jones said.
Starks on March 13 was convicted of murder and a gun enhancement in Lipscomb’s murder on Sept. 4, 2024, in Gary.
Starks testified at his March 13 trial that he shot Lipscomb in self-defense. He argued she came up behind him, she went for his gun and he reacted.
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The testimony failed to convince jurors. They had the option to convict him of murder, a lesser charge of reckless homicide, or acquit.
The shooting was outside of camera range for around five seconds. During that brief timeframe, prosecutors alleged Starks pulled a gun, threatened, then killed Lipscomb.
Other members of the lawn crew said she was “combative,” or belligerent and cursed them out, Harper said.
Lipscomb was the “reckless” person that day; his client had “seconds to figure out what to do,” Harper said. Afterwards, “he was an 18-year-old kid and he took off.”
Earlier, during his testimony, Starks said he was helping out his friend cut Lipscomb’s neighbor’s grass, his friend’s client, as a favor.
Starks said he was armed since “Gary is a high crime area,” he worried about equipment getting stolen and had “bad experiences” with stray dogs.
The shooting happened very quickly.
“I didn’t have time to think,” he said. It was an almost split-second “reaction.”
“I’ve never been in this situation before,” he testified later.
The victim, Lipscomb, was found at the scene and died later at Methodist Hospital in Gary.
A Ring video showed Lipscomb yelling at two men working on the lawn next door. She walked out of camera view toward one man in a red shirt on a riding mower, while a second man was trimming grass. She is still “heard yelling” when a gunshot is fired, the affidavit states.
The man with the red shirt ran across the street, holding a suspected gun. He got into a white Ford Taurus that took off.
Police traced the car through a license plate reader system to Starks’s girlfriend.
Police found a 9 mm bullet casing inside the car when executing a search warrant. Investigators matched Starks’s BMV photo to the Ring video.
Deborah Laverty is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune; Post-Tribune reporter Meredith Colias-Pete contributed to this story.