Arlington man pleads guilty in teen's fatal shooting

FORT WORTH -- Two weeks after a jury couldn't agree whether he did it, a 20-year-old man has pleaded guilty to killing a teenager during a confrontation over a minor car crash.

Giorgio Raleigh Debose, 20, reached a plea bargain Friday and received a six-year prison sentence for murder in the death of Terrance Chance.

In June, Debose went on trial in state District Judge George Gallagher's court, but a mistrial was declared after the jury deadlocked 7-5 on a guilty verdict.

"I think, based on the way the trial turned out and the way our evidence came across when the witnesses got on the stand, we felt the appropriate step was to resolve this in a just manner," prosecutor Jim Hudson said. "I would have, obviously, liked more time, but we felt like this was the right thing to do."

Debose's attorney, Jim Shaw, said it was a fair deal.

"I hated for him to come in and plead guilty, but they made him an offer of six years and he has almost two years in there [in jail], and he took it," Shaw said. "They made him an offer that he wouldn't refuse. I hated for him to come in and plead guilty and, in a sense, throw cold water on the people that believed he was not guilty."

Police have said that on July 5, 2006, Chance and another man were in a Chevrolet Malibu when it struck a Chrysler New Yorker occupied by Debose and other men. Witnesses told police that two people who were in the New Yorker chased the Malibu on foot but that the car got away.

The cars eventually met up again at East Mulkey Street and New York Avenue. Witnesses said Debose and another man got out of the New Yorker and confronted the Malibu's driver and Chance, a passenger. Witnesses told police that Debose shot Chance.

Afterward, police have said, Chance's friends loaded his body into the back seat of the Malibu and drove it to an abandoned house on East Powell Avenue. The driver later told police that he left Chance's body there while he tried to retaliate for the killing.