Delia D'Ambra

He never turned up his nose to nobody.

If he saw somebody he knew, he'd grab them around the neck and hug them.'"

The thought of the DA potentially offering Troy a plea deal was incomprehensible to the Newton family.

They wanted Troy to answer for his crime and face the penalty of his actions, plain and simple.

Initially, detectives told the press that drugs and alcohol may have been a factor in the crime, stating that Troy was possibly drunk when he killed Shane, and that he'd claimed to have consumed a mixture of hard liquor, Xanax, and a dozen beers before the shooting.

But inebriation had not been an issue for Shane because his autopsy revealed there were no drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of his death.

And on top of that, his autopsy also showed he'd been shot point blank in the back of his head, which to me points to a scenario that Shane probably never saw the attack coming, or if he did, he had no chance to fight back.

In the nearly 13 months after the crime, Shirley, Shane's mom, said her life had been made unbearable thanks to strangers taunting her about Shane's death.

For example, she told the News Herald that on Shane's birthday in October 1996, someone had phoned her home three times and never spoken a word.

They just played funeral music on the line.

I know, how horrible and creepy to do to a person who'd already been through so much.

But the big sticking point with the case hinged on the DA's opinion that Troy had been unaware of his actions at the time of Shane's murder due to being under the influence of substances.

So by early 1997, prosecutors were very much leaning towards letting Troy plead down to manslaughter.

But in a letter to the editor of the News Herald, the Newton family contested the state's theory that Troy was so inebriated that he couldn't be held criminally liable for his actions.

The family pointed to the fact that Troy had used Shane's own gun to commit the crime.

Then he'd stolen the firearm and Shane's car and taken it joyriding for several hours without damaging it.

Then, after all that, he'd traded Shane's gun for money and brought his car back to the crime scene.

Which, to Shane's family, did not sound like behavior someone who was unaware of his actions would be capable of.

They wrote in part in their letter to the newspaper, quote, "'The family feels that Wisnett needs to do his time and be punished for his actions.

The loss of Shane has left an empty place in our hearts and all we have are our memories of Shane.