A Sharon Hill man was sentenced to 12 to 24 years in a state prison Friday for the August 2021 shooting that set off a chain of events culminating in the death of 8-year Fanta Bility. Angelo ‘A.J.’ Ford (COURTESY PHOTO) After the hearing before Common Pleas Court Judge G. Michael Green, Angelo “AJ” Ford, 19, of the first block of High Street, was also sentenced to a consecutive two to four years on one of four unrelated cases to which he pleaded guilty Thursday, for a total sentence of 14-28 years. The sentence was less that what prosecutors requested. They argued that the harm Ford’s action caused the victim’s family and the community demanded significant punishment. Ford’s attorney said he came from a troubled background and deserves a chance to get his life back together sooner rather than later. According to information developed during a bench trial before Green in June, affidavits of probable cause and a grand jury presentment: Ford and a group of other males got into an argument while exiting an Academy Park High School football game that night. Ford and another male, 21-year-old Hasein Strand, exchanged gunfire on the 900 block of Coates Street, about a block from where the game was letting out. Ford, then 15, shot in a westbound direction toward Ridley Avenue and Strand shot back at Ford in the direction of the football field. The grand jury concluded that Ford fired five rounds from a .45-caliber weapon and Strand fired two shots from a 9 mm. gun. One of Strand’s bullets struck 13-year-old Hafize Sherif at Kenny Avenue and Coates Street, about 140 feet west of where three Sharon Hill police officers were overseeing the stadium being let out. Immediately after Ford and Strand fired, the three uniformed officers discharged their weapons at a Chevrolet Impala making its way down Coates Street. Those officers — Devon Smith, Sean Patrick Dolan and Brian James Devaney — fired a combined 25 rounds toward the vehicle. Some  went wide and into the pedestrians behind the car, killing Fanta Bility, and striking her sister and two other people. Smith, Dolan and Devaney each pleaded guilty in November 2022 to one count of involuntary manslaughter and 10 counts of reckless endangerment. They were each sentenced to five years of probation with 11 months of house arrest in May 2023. Strand, of the 500 block of Felton Street in Collingdale, was sentenced to three to six years in prison in January 2022 after pleading guilty to aggravated assault and possession of a firearm. Verdict and pleas Ford was found guilty on two counts of attempted murder for shooting at Strand and Strand’s friend Khalil Pierre, as well as aggravated assault and reckless endangerment charges, four weapons charges and reckless endangerment. Ford entered open guilty pleas Thursday to four other cases he had picked up at the county jail. They included aggravated and simple assault, terroristic threats, possession of a weapon by an inmate, assaulting another inmate, criminal mischief, risking a catastrophe and failing to prevent a catastrophe. He set fire to toilet paper in his cell at the county jail in Concord, where he remains incarcerated. Green imposed concurrent sentences on most of those cases, except for an attack on corrections officers in May, for which he received the consecutive 2-4 years. Attorney arguments Much of Friday’s daylong hearing was taken up by Deputy District Attorney Laurie Moore diligently establishing through a PowerPoint presentation and testimony from Delaware County Detective Vincent Port that Ford was involved in gang activity with a group known as “Members 8-12.” Port described two juvenile adjudications Ford had in June 2021 for a vehicle theft and firearms offense, as well as an associated bench warrant issued in September 2021 for a probation violation. Ford was arrested on that violation Oct. 14, 2021 and was charged with the Strand shooting the following month. Speaking as an expert on gang activity and jargon, Port went into text messages and Instagram chats found on Ford’s phone after his arrest in October that referenced another group “Members 8-12” was antagonistic to called Money Making Legends, of which Strand was allegedly a member. Images and videos showed Ford pointing handguns at the camera in the time before he was initially caught, as well as additional posts he made after escaping from a juvenile facility in February 2022 that included an image of bullets with the names of other gang members laid over them, including Strand’s nickname. Green found Moore had established the requisite evidence for a gang-related sentencing enhancement on the attempted murder charges, as well as a deadly weapon enhancement for the use of a firearm. Moore sought a total sentence of 32 to 67 years. She argued that the damage Ford had done to the community coupled with his apparent inability to be supervised in a juvenile facility and his picking four additional cases in the county jail shows that he has little regard for the law and will require significant rehabilitation before his release. Moore at times had to speak up to be heard over the many present who were there in support of Ford but said that his actions in August impacted far more than just the victims in this case. “First, the Bility family lost their child,” she said. “There is no loss of life that night if AJ Ford did not bring a gun and started shooting. There is no loss of life. Fanta would be here. She would be 11 years old. “And the pain that her family feels, and this community feels for her loss, would not have occurred if AJ Ford did not decide to bring a gun to a high school football game, pull it out, and fire it down the block at Hasein Strand over nothing; nothing of consequence.” She said that shooting divided a community, deeply traumatized everyone else at the game that night who witnessed violence and traumatized the officers who fired and those who responded, including Sharon Hill Officer John Scanlon, who tried to save Fanta’s life. But more than that, Moore said Ford had never displayed an ounce of remorse. Immediately following that shooting, he was posing with guns, she said. While on the run a second time, Moore said Ford flaunted his freedom by coming to the county Government Center and taking a picture of himself outside the door. He continued to threaten Strand and his family, bragged about fighting corrections officers, tried to set toilet paper on fire in his cell, assaulted another inmate and had two shivs hidden in his cell. Defense counsel Mary Beth Welch said her client began life being abandoned by his mother and being raised by his grandmother. He suffered abuse at the hands of father figures, was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD and had an unsteady school life where he often was not given the tools he needed to succeed. His abandonment issues were triggered again when his grandmother moved away when he was 15 and he turned to friends as a place to belong. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, his academic career faltered and his impulsivity became problematic, Welch said. Welch offered numerous letters that described Ford as thoughtful, caring, loving and kind. She said that if this were a 40-year-old who had been offered the ability to rehabilitate himself and had consistently failed to do so, then perhaps the sentence Moore sought would be appropriate. But this was a 19-year-old who had been “picked on, bullied, confined in small spaces for long periods of time, isolated with nothing to do,” had begged for attention, been denied any meaningful mental health treatment and had no emotional support for the past three years, Welch argued. “AJ Ford needs a path through to be able to resolve what has happened and to grow from that experience,” she said. “He is exactly what the courts are talking about by giving him a pathway to parole earlier rather than later.” Ford read a short statement in which he apologized to the victims, their families and his own family. He noted he has been working toward his general equivalency diploma but has had to adapt to a hostile environment in jail where he is unable to ask anyone for help, because that would only make things worse for him. “This case took away my youth, I do not want it to take away my life,” he said. “I’m very remorseful for everything that happened.” Green said there was nothing that could be done that could right the terrible tragedy of Fanta’s death and the harm that it caused her family and the community, but Ford’s apology was a “tremendous beginning” toward his rehabilitation and setting his life on a better path. “Our community has been deeply, deeply harmed as a result of everything that happened that evening,” the judge said. “I am not, by these sentences, attempting to cast blame on Angelo Ford for all that happened that night, but Mr. Ford, you played a significant role.” In addition to prison time, Ford must provide a DNA sample to state police and serve eight years of probation. He is not eligible for early release, but was given credit time for about two years already served.