One by one, Wanda Fitzgerald pointed to photos printed on five large canvases that she and her family carefully hauled through security and into the third-floor courtroom Thursday.
Ms. Fitzgerald pointed to a canvas filled with pictures of her daughter, Nandi Fitzgerald.
“This is my baby daughter,” she told the judge, pointing to one photo.
She went on: “Nandi and me. Nandi and me. Nandi and me.”
Family members in the courtroom chuckled.
The large canvas prints showed happier times — times before Dec. 31, 2021, when Nandi, her son, Denzel Nowlin Jr., and her best friend, Tatiana Hill, were found shot to death in a Homewood rowhouse.
Family members brought the portraits to the courtroom ahead of sentencing for Ronald Steave, the father of one of Nandi’s children and the man convicted of killing them. Nandi and Tatiana were both 28, and they’d been friends for years. Denzel was 12. Everyone called him Buddy.
Steave’s car was in the area around the Hamilton Avenue home the night of the killings, and investigators found shell casings at the scene that matched others found in that car. Photos from one of the women’s phones showed the three adults together that night.
Steave was taken into custody in March 2022. Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty but withdrew that notice days before trial. Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski convicted Steave of three counts of first-degree murder following a two-day bench trial in November.
While the prosecutors and the sheriff’s deputies assigned to keep order in the courtroom told the family members to address only the judge — don’t look at Steave, don’t show him the photos — they still had pointed words for Steave.
“I will not speak your name,” said Cindy Young, Tatiana’s aunt.
She faced Judge Borkowski as she read from her handwritten statement, hands shaking as she tried to give voice to the pain. Her words, though, were for the man shackled at the defense table.
“You are an evil thing that should never see the light of day again,” she said.
Linda Lennon, Nandi’s godmother, said that the judgment for Steave is not over.
“Listen here — you are in front of the earthly judge right now. You have the Almighty up there waiting for you,” she said. “That’s when the real punishment starts. May God have mercy on your soul.”
In Pennsylvania, a first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory term of life in prison.
Sentencing in the case was a formality — a chance for family members to tell the judge about who Nandi, Tatiana and Buddy were in life and about the grief left behind.
Buddy loved football and wrestling, and he had a “big, handsome, charming smile,” said his cousin, Kenique Barbaur.
She said Buddy’s younger cousins looked up to him, and they still have questions. She said even the adults in the family can’t understand why Steave would kill not only the mother of his child and her best friend, but a child, too.
“This monster looked a 12-year-old boy in his face, hiding behind a door in fear, probably begging for his life, and he was still able to pull the trigger,” she said.
“I wouldn’t wish this pain on no one,” she said, “not even his own family.”
Judge Borkowski called the crime one that “pushes the limits of human understanding” as he imposed the mandatory sentence: three consecutive life terms.
“The punishment is severe,” he said, and then echoed what Ms. Lennon told Steave during her statement: “The real punishment will begin further on down the road, as they say.”
First Published: January 30, 2025, 8:46 p.m.
Updated: January 31, 2025, 6:03 p.m.