Calling it “a difficult case because of the ages of the persons involved,” Warren County Circuit Judge Isadore Patrick sentenced three Vicksburg teens Friday to 15 years in prison each. They had pleaded guilty to manslaughter June 3.

Gemini Porter, 17, 2501 Culkin Road; Kersey Young, 18, 1115 Adams Lane; and Roosevelt Dewayne Harris, 18, 1803 First East St., stood silently as their sentences were announced.

The victim, Antonio Turner, 25, died from two gunshot wounds to the back after a botched robbery on Alcorn Drive in the early hours of March 15, 2009.

“When you take property from someone, you can replace it,” Patrick told the teens. “But when you take someone’s like, you can’t give it back.”

Patrick said the victim was “doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing,” but did not deserve to be killed.

“Our community is better than that,” he said. “No one’s life should be taken like that. Our young people should know that.”

Porter, Young and Harris were each ordered to pay $322.50 in court costs and state assessments. Patrick said they would be sent to the Walnut Grove Correctional Authority, which houses inmates younger than 21, and would be credited with time served in the Warren County Jail, where they had been while awaiting trial.

Upon release, they will be on probation for five years.

Patrick did not specify what Turner was doing on Alcorn Drive when the three youths reportedly attempted to rob him. District Attorney Ricky Smith said previously that when Turner resisted, the teens said they became frightened and “pulled the trigger without thinking.”

The three had claimed to be members of a gang known as “K-3,” the K reportedly for the north Vicksburg community of Kings, though none of the teens lives there.

Smith said the prosecution team, which included Assistant District Attorney Dewey Arthur, had hoped for the maximum 20-year sentence but respect the decision of the court.

“With these convictions we believe that we, along with local law enforcement officers, have dealt a fatal blow to the individuals calling themselves the K-3 gang,” Smith said. In recent months, the DA had also secured convictions on other reputed members of the gang who had been accused of a series of robberies, some armed and some with physical force, against pedestrians in the spring of 2009.

One of those charged in the holdups was former high school basketball star Sha’Kayla Caples, 19, 414 Ford Road, who lost a college scholarship after her arrest. The robbery charges against her were dismissed and she was not indicted in return for her pledge to testify as a state’s witness in the trial. She is Gemini Porter’s cousin.

In his remarks from the bench, Patrick said he had received many letters from the community prior to the sentencing and read them all, along with other statements and reports from officials that were part of the sentencing report.

“The community has been somewhat divided on this case, and may be misinformed,” he said, with some people writing him that they thought the teens were being railroaded. “There were at least five statements given that all three defendants had guns, that all three were shooting at the victim. I read no statements of people that said something different than that.”

About 40 attended the sentencing, waiting three hours while other cases were heard. All were scanned with a hand-held metal detector as they entered the courtroom.

After, family and friends of the defendants and victim gathered outside the courtroom, but had no comment. “It’s over now,” said one.