Staff photo / Ed Runyan Andre Bailey was sentenced to 39 years to life in prison Thursday for his role in the Oct. 17 shooting death of Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, at Bailey’s Bott Street home on Youngstown’s East Side. His attorney, at right, is Walter Madison.

YOUNGSTOWN — Andre K. Bailey, 40, was sentenced to 39 years to life in prison Thursday in the Oct. 17 shooting death of Reynaldo Hernandez, 24, at Bailey’s Bott Street home on Youngstown’s East Side. He was convicted at trial.

Hernandez’s body was found the next day in Mount Hope Veterans Memorial Cemetery on Youngstown’s East Side, not far from Bott Street. In closing statements in the trial, Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor John Juhasz said surveillance video in Bailey’s house showed Hernandez inside the home with a blood stain on the back of his shirt after he arrived there.

Juhasz said it showed Bailey “with a gun, pointing it” inside the home. It does not show Hernandez being shot, Juhasz said. The footage showed “brooms. They’ve got mops. They’re moving furniture. They’re rolling up rugs. They’re using bleach,” Juhasz said of the men in the home trying to remove evidence of the killing.

It also showed Hernandez on the driveway collapsing, creating a pool of blood, Juhasz said.

The surveillance video also showed Hernandez “going down the driveway” after he was shot in the house and remaining in the driveway for about 10 minutes before men put him in a car and drove away. Someone finished cleaning up the blood 90 seconds before the first police officers arrived, Juhasz said.

Bailey was convicted at trial March 3 of aggravated murder with prior calculation and design; aggravated murder; felony murder; murder; aggravated robbery; tampering with evidence; and having weapons while under disability.

In a sentencing memorandum, Mahoning County prosecutors were recommending a sentence of 42 years to life in prison while acknowledging that Bailey was most likely not the actual shooter. Their filing also noted that under Ohio law, the principal offender and a complicitor can get the same sentence.

Before Visiting Judge W. Wyatt McKay handed down the sentence in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, he read from a long list of factors he considered. He said Bailey has a “lengthy criminal record,” has “served two prior prison sentences in Ohio, both were drug related” and Bailey served a federal prison sentence for firearms offenses.

He said Bailey is a “multistate offender”; the victim, “of course, suffered serious, physical harm”; Bailey has an active warrant for his arrest in another Ohio county for “very serious drug trafficking offenses”; Bailey “poses the greatest likelihood of committing future crimes”; and Bailey “poses a greater risk to the community because he is a drug trafficker,” McKay said.

The judge noted that Bailey would get one sentence for the four types of murder convictions because there was one victim.

He said for the aggravated murder, Bailey could get life in prison with parole eligibility after either 20, 25 or 30 years in prison or no chance at parole. The judge selected 25 years to life plus three years for a gun specification and additional time for other of Bailey’s convictions.

Juhasz read a letter from the victim’s mother and her aunt before McKay handed down the sentence. It states that “despite everything that happened, God bless Mr. Bailey and his family. There is no hate from their side of the case. They hope that Mr. Bailey can find peace and that he will find God, and God will forgive him.”

The sentencing memorandum referenced remarks during the trial that another man indicted in the case but never located or arrested fired the fatal shots into the victim. But it stated that McKay “would be well within the law if (he) sentenced Mr. Bailey as if he were the actual killer.”

The filing stated that the surveillance video proved that Bailey” unequivocally committed the last two of those offenses — having weapons while under disability and tampering with evidence.”

“Mr. Bailey is 40 years old and arguably not the principal offender. Still, this was a senseless killing. It was not a crime of passion. It was an execution,” the filing states. Any suggestion that Hernandez pulled a gun on one of the defendants, resulting in the defendant killing Hernandez in self defense was “dispersed by (Bailey) and his cohorts when they sanitized the home of weapons and (bullet shell) casings,” the filing states.

Bailey was previously convicted of felonious assault as a juvenile and was convicted as an adult in Ohio and Georgia, the filing states. Bailey did not make any comments at the sentencing.