CHARLOTTE — A man has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of a 16-year-old boy almost one and a half years ago, authorities said.
Spencer David Clark pleaded guilty Wednesday to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 48 to 70 months in prison, according to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office.
That sentence was suspended pending his completion of 36 months of supervised probation.
Police said Marcqueon Goodman was shot and killed on April 28, 2021 on Rose Ridge Place in southwest Charlotte. Clark, who was 24 at the time, was charged with murder.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for the DA’s office said Clark had no criminal history. The spokesperson said that day, Clark found two people breaking into his car. As he confronted them, he saw what he believed was one of the individuals reaching for a gun, the spokesperson said. That was when the DA’s office said Clark fired his own gun and then chased the other person, shooting again and resulting in Goodman’s death.
Goodman was a Harding University High School student who had just made the basketball team.
>> Click on the graphic below, and scroll through as two mothers -- including Goodman’s -- share their heartbreaking stories after losing a child to gun violence.
“My son wasn’t even out the house a minute or two before he got killed,” his mom told Channel 9′s Allison Latos. “My son was my heart, my soul, my first child.”
The DA’s Office said they took a look at the evidence in the case before Clark pleaded guilty.
“The DA’s Office thoroughly evaluated the available evidence and determined, based on evidence and testimony, that a jury was unlikely to convict Clark of first-degree or second-degree murder,” the spokesperson said. “An analysis of the evidence led prosecutors to determine that a conviction of voluntary manslaughter was the appropriate outcome.”
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