A life lost, another ruined. We have followed this story from the first and it does not get any easier.
Brent Jones was smaller and less athletic than Adam Gaydos.
But when Jones, 21, a student at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, heard his fraternity brother was trying to take sexual advantage of an inebriated girl on Jan. 16, 2005, Jones asked Gaydos to stop.
"Brent came to the aid and honor of his guests that weekend," Assistant Cuyahoga Prosecutor Rick Bombik said. "He ended up getting punched in the nose (by Gaydos), and that should have been the end of it."
Tragically, it wasn't.
Twenty minutes later, Gaydos - a 21-year-old former Mentor resident and former standout athlete at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills - started a second confrontation with Jones, a biology student who was engaged to be married."(Gaydos) hit (Jones)," Bombik said. "One of the victims(sic) described it as one of the hardest punches he'd ever seen."
After the Mount Vernon native was whacked once in the left side of the face in the hallway of the dormitory, the back of his head hit a cinderblock wall.Jones was rushed to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, but died two weeks later from brain injuries.
On Thursday, Gaydos was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty last month to involuntary manslaughter.
"All Brent was trying to do was keep (Gaydos) from raping someone," said the victim's grandmother, Barbara Wagner, after the hearing.
There is no satisfaction, only loss and sorrow.
