A judge sentenced Johnathan Dawkins to nine years in prison and five years supervised release Friday for the stabbing death of Dwayne Brisbon.
Three members of Brisbon’s family told the court how Brisbon’s death impacted them, especially the effect it had on his son.
“Sure judge, he can get another man in his life,” Brisbon’s mother told Judge Russell Canan, “but it won’t be his daddy.”
Brisbon’s mother said, through tears, that after her son’s death, her grandson came to her house expecting to see his father. After searching every room of the house, he sat on her lap and asked where his father was.
Brisbon’s fiance said her son once asked a police officer in a grocery store if the officer could be his new dad. She told Dawkins that she hoped he could turn his life around during his time in prison.
Dawkins stabbed Brisbon in the neck on May 1, 2012, after Brisbon intervened in an argument Dawkins was having with another person. Brisbon crashed his car into Shaw’s Tavern on Florida Avenue Northwest shortly after and died at Howard University Hospital.
Reading from a prepared statement, Dawkins apologized to the members of Brisbon’s family and said he never meant for his actions to result in Brisbon’s death.
“You took part of my life,” Brisbon’s fiance said during the hearing. “You took my best friend. You took a father. You tok a son.”
