Man pleads guilty to shooting cousin

Jaycee Carrywater was ordered to serve more than five years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to shooting his cousin in the groin during a dispute over $40.

With the plea, Carrywater, 23, avoided the possibility of a 20-year prison term if convicted on the original charge of attempted first-degree murder. Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor grilled Carrywater, who said he has only an eighth-grade education and can’t spell.

“What did you think this was, the shootout at the OK Corral or something?” O’Connor asked. “What if one of those guns goes off and the bullet goes into somebody’s house and kills some little kid? It’s mystifying.”

Deputy Prosecutor Matt Duggan agreed with Assistant Public Defender Al Rossi to allow Carrywater, who has four previous felony convictions, to plead guilty to the reduced charge of second-degree assault with a weapons enhancement.

Duggan said the shooting resulted from a longstanding feud between Carrywater and his cousin and rival gang member, Jeriehmie Franetich. On January 12, Franetich and Carrywater argued over the phone about $40 and they agreed to meet at Crestline Street and Rowan Avenue to settle the dispute.

Franetich arrived with a handgun tucked into his waistband and he had a friend join him who was initially armed with a shotgun and two knives.

Carrywater drove up to Franetich, who was standing on the street corner, and fired five or six shots. One of the bullets struck Franetich in the groin and his friend drove him to Holy Family Hospital, where Franetich was treated and released, Duggan said.

“I pulled up. He tried to pull a weapon so I pulled out mine and I shot him,” Carrywater told O’Connor.

Rossi said he considered taking the case to trial and arguing self-defense, but he couldn’t guarantee that it would have worked.

“I really don’t know what Mr. Carrywater or Mr. Franetich thought would happen. But it’s pretty obvious that all the people involved anticipated there would be some kind of trouble. And all the people involved figured the other person had a firearm,” Rossi said.

“It goes without saying that really nobody had any business meeting anybody there in a dispute over money.”

Carrywater apologized to the judge and his family. “That’s about it,” he said.

But O’Connor, who sentenced Carrywater to 68 months in prison, wasn’t done.

“To go to Crestline and Rowan and decide you guys are going to pull your guns, it’s really difficult for most people to grasp that something like that would happen,” she said. “Obviously, the general way you relate to the world is incredibly dysfunctional.”