Michael Shaheed McLaughlin loved to play games, his mother said.“He would play dice all day at my house,” Kim Goodwin said. "There weren't enough hours in the day."But after a game of dice in Atlantic City on Aug. 9, 2018, something went wrong.It ended with the 17-year-old running away and Rahsaad Norwood shooting him in the back.“What happened? Why?” Goodwin asked Norwood on Thursday at his sentencing in the killing of her middle son.McLaughlin, known to his loved ones as Keal, would have been entering his senior year of high school in Cumberland County. Instead, his summer visit to his father was the last for the Bridgeton teen.
“The video itself … makes it crystal clear this defendant — as the victim was running away unarmed — pointed a handgun at him and shot him in the head,” Assistant Prosecutor Erika Halayko told the judge.Norwood, now 21, had only been on the street for 2½ months when the shooting happened. He had just finished serving more than 2½ years for an aggravated assault when he was 16.On Thursday, Superior Court Judge Bernard DeLury sent him back to prison with a 25-year sentence, after he pleaded guilty last month to aggravated manslaughter.“If I could take back that day, I would. But, unfortunately, things don’t work out like that,” Norwood told McLaughlin’s family. “I’m sorry. I’m very remorseful.”Goodwin told her son’s killer, “you can keep your sorry’s.”“Michael had love from Atlantic County to Cumberland County,” she said. “You took that from everybody over nothing.”Marquise McLaughlin was just 15 months younger than his brother.“They were inseparable,” their mother said, as her older son, Lamont Goodwin, stood by her side for support.“You know how it feels to have a little brother look up to you and you are his strength, and you take that strength away. You lose a part,” she yelled at Norwood. “We all lost a part of us. But we will not let you tear us down.”McLaughlin’s father, who had not planned on speaking, said what really struck him was that this was family.His youngest son’s sister is married to Norwood’s brother.“What hurts me most was this situation was family ties,” he said, as he looked at Norwood. “You put both these families in an awkward situation.”Norwood must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence, or 21 years and three months. He will then have to serve five years’ probation.
Kim Goodwin wore a shirt honoring her son. On the front, was a picture of the two of them. On the back are Michael and his younger brother, Marquise.
