A game of spades, an altercation, a reckless homicide and a life altered: teen gets 14 years
- Jamie Duffy
- 27 minutes ago
- 4 min read
ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. ---It was the night before their high school graduation from Snider High last year when best friends, Jaylen Murray and Jayden Cosme, went over to Uncle Laron Rosse’s home for a game of spades.
Unusually, however, the night turned violent and Murray shot and killed the uncle he adored.
After the homicide, shock went through the close knit family, their friends and stunned their high school principal, Chad Hissong, who spoke at Murray’s sentencing Thursday in Allen Superior Court.
Murray pleaded guilty to reckless homicide, a Level 5 felony, and received six years with two years suspended for probation. He was sentenced to another 10 years for using a gun in the commission of a crime, upwards of 14 years at the Indiana Department of Correction where little good takes place.
The hope of his large family is that Murray will learn from the experience and come out stronger and ready to get back to his prior life. For five years, Murray has been operating a clothing company and earned between $60,000 and $70,000 in 2025, according to a sentencing memorandum and his relatives.
To this day, the large group of supporters, some of whom spoke prior to the sentencing, don’t buy the original story told by the lone witness, Uncle Laron’s girlfriend.
The girlfriend initially claimed to homicide detectives that on the night of May 30, 2025, the boys assaulted Rosse who is Jaylen’s uncle. They claimed self defense. Quickly, the two were charged with murder and faced life sentences.
However, her statement changed under oath, according to one of Murray’s attorneys, Gregory Ridenour.
“In a deposition, the main witness changed her story and admitted to lying under oath,” Ridenour told Zent.
Uncle Laron apparently drew first after accusing the boys of cheating at cards. Prosecutors and family admitted to The Probable Cause that Laron Rosse had been drinking, and possibly more than that, with the girlfriend in the same state.
For Cosme sentencing, read here:
“Something else went on in that room,” Rosse’s wife told Allen Superior Judge David Zent Thursday. “He’s (Laron) pulled a gun on me. I know something else went on in that house.”
Mrs. Rosse full name will not be identified in this story. Rosse’s sister and Murray’s grandmother, Tonja Rosse-Murray, has not remained silent.
At Cosme’s sentencing last week, not only did Rosse-Murray tell Zent that neither boy was violent, nor vicious, but that her brother, who was dear to her, was not perfect, and that the female witness/girlfriend “did not tell the truth.”
This untruth was the undoing of these two young men.
Granted, prosecutors dropped the murder charges on both boys when DNA on guns at the Rosse home - one under Rosse’s body - showed evidence of Rosse and his girlfriend’s DNA, but not the defendants.
Ridenour argued in front of Zent that the murder charges disappeared because the state “has admitted that this case is no longer believable and are not comfortable on the murder charges” and the state “cannot prove his intention to kill Rosse.”
In the sentencing memorandum, it states that Murray was ready to get on the stand and testify that his uncle had consumed “a lot of alcohol and ingest what he believed to be crack cocaine.” Toxicology tests showed a high level of cocaine, the memorandum added.
Uncle Laron pulled the gun on Cosme and “Jaylen tried to intervene,” it further stated.
“As Jaylen and Jayden were exiting the residence, Jaylen would testify that his uncle then pushed the rifle into Jaylen’s back and a physical altercation then ensued. Jaylen would have testified that they fought over the rifle, and at one point, Jaylen grabbed his own firearm and shot his uncle repeatedly.”
Deputy prosecutor Rachel Gschwend had the tough job of calling the case “murky” but reminded the court that there was loss of life. The prosecution asked for 26 years which meant the maximum for the reckless homicide charge and the maximum for the state’s gun enhancement.
Neither side would be completely happy, Zent predicted, when he pronounced the sentence, the full remarks which are attached to this story. (See here).
The sentencing range for the gun enhancement is five to 20 years. It is not applied to any other weapon used in a homicide in the Hoosier state.
Sean Arata, also Murray's attorney, said Murray’s only other brush with the criminal justice system was a marijuana possession when he was a juvenile and he successfully completed a six-month program.
During the 265 days he’s already spent at the Allen County Jail, he has not been disciplined, Arata said.
Clearly, Murray had family support. His mother, Statia Murray had done everything in her power to make sure her son graduated from high school, one reason while Hissong and the assistant principal, Chelsea Dorton, stood up in court for Murray, they said.
Laron Rosse’s brokenhearted daughter was the lone person to speak at the mic for the prosecution.
“To know my dad is to love him,” she said. Her father paid his time every time he was incarcerated.
“To sit here and not make him take accountability is hurtful. I’m sick of the constant excuses because not everyone knew him as a good person. One day I will forgive him, but I’m not there yet. I’m not bitter, I’m still grieving my dad.”
Zent said it was “obviously a very difficult case,” and it was his job to weigh the aggravators and the mitigators and come up with a sentence that was fair.
“Obviously the bottom line is you shot and killed someone,” Zent told Murray. “That’s the crime you pled guilty to as well as the enhancement that can be quite stiff under Indiana law for firearms used in the commission of a crime.”
He was impressed that the principal of a large local high school showed up to speak on Murray’s behalf and had a side note about guns.
“You’ve got a right to carry a gun. Sure you do.," Zent said. "But if you hadn’t had a gun and he hadn’t had a gun …you wouldn’t be wearing orange and you wouldn’t be about to go to prison which everyone knows you are. It’s just a question of how long.”