Woman hopes killers of her parents ‘find salvation’

Thursday, March 1, 2001 | 11:06 a.m.

The daughter of the Candy Lady was forgiving and charitable toward the seemingly unremorseful teenager sentenced to life in prison for killing her parents.

"I thank God they caught them and that this is over," said Floria "Candy" Scharnett after District Judge Lee Gates on Wednesday sentenced the second of two killers of her parents to life in prison with parole possible after 40 years.

"I don't hate (them) because that will not bring my parents back. I can only hope they find salvation in the Lord while they are in prison."

Deangelo Mitchell, 18, who did not pull the trigger in the double killing at the West Las Vegas home of Flora Johnson, 86, and her husband Azel Evans, 71, actually received a little tougher sentence than gunman Shauntay Wheaton, who was 15 at the time of the Sept. 23, 1998, slayings.

While Gates, who heard both cases, gave both teenagers life with parole, he sentenced Mitchell to 35 months to 13 years for the robbery with use of a deadly weapon to run at the end of the life sentence. Wheaton received three to 10 years additional time for the same offense.

Flora Johnson was known affectionately as the Candy Lady for selling candy, ice cream and soft drinks to neighborhood children out of her home.

"My mother often sold the treats to the children for less than she paid for them, and she would extend credit to the children who couldn't afford to pay," Scharnett said.

The couple were robbed of $17 by the teenagers, whom Gates called "cowards" as he handed down Mitchell's sentence.

"Your client has shown no remorse and neither did the other guy (Wheaton)," Gates told Mitchell's attorney Anthony Sgro, who had advised his client to not make a statement at sentencing. "(They killed) harmless people who never did anything to anyone. They are a bunch of cowards who killed old people.

"(But) a lot of what they are can't be blamed on them. Someone had to raise them."

To Mitchell, Gates said, "the best part of your life is going to be behind bars. ... I hope you take advantage and educate yourself. ... When you come out I hope you learned your lesson."

Mitchell was convicted of murder in early January by a Clark County jury that took about an hour to deliberate his fate. Wheaton was found guilty in December of murder by a jury that deliberated more than four hours.

At trial, prosecutors argued that Mitchell and Wheaton went to the elderly couple's home to rob them of the money they earned selling treats and ended up killing them instead. Johnson died from one gunshot wound, and Evans was shot three times.

A neighbor witnessed the boys leaving the scene of the crime, and fingerprints and bloody footprints placed Wheaton inside the home. Both boys also made incriminating statements, prosecutors said. Wheaton told police he and Mitchell never intended for anyone to die, they only went to the home to rob the couple of a "few bucks."

Chief Deputy District Attorney L.J. O'Neale, who prosecuted both boys, told jurors during the Wheaton trial that, in his statements to police, Wheaton came across as cocky at times, at one point daring the police to check for his fingerprints at the scene.

Wheaton's demeanor changed when he was being fingerprinted at the jail, however. O'Neale told the jurors that Wheaton began crying and confessed "I didn't want them to tell on me, so I shot them."

On Wednesday, Deputy District attorney Danae Adams stood in for O'Neale, who was working on another case, and told Gates that if Mitchell "should not get more (prison time than Wheaton) he should not get less."

Sgro had told jurors -- and reiterated before Gates on Wednesday -- that Wheaton was the shooter, not his client. Sgro had tried to persuade jurors that Mitchell did not know a robbery was about to take place at the couple's home.

The prosecution, however, was able to prove that Mitchell had the intent to commit another crime, such as the robbery, when he entered the couple's home, which is required by Nevada law for the nonslayer to be convicted of murder.