CANTON ‒ When Shaun M. Cunningham shot Travis L. Charles, he didn’t just kill a boxer, a brother, a son, an uncle and a boyfriend.
He killed a father to five children, including some who had not formed memories of him before he died from a single gunshot wound to the back of his head on Oct. 25, 2022.
Charles’ sister Latisha Jackson described that loss in a letter read Tuesday in Stark County Common Pleas Court where Judge Chryssa Hartnett sentenced Cunningham to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 18 years.
“Some of Travis’ children will never know who Travis was,” Jackson wrote in the letter read aloud by Assistant Stark County Prosecutor Megan Starrett. “They all will not have Travis for birthdays, holidays and father walks to school, school dances, graduations or weddings. You have taken someone very special for each of us.”
Jackson wrote that on July 27, 2019, Charles told her that he felt he would never be good enough for Cunningham, grandfather to four of his children.
“Sis, I’m going to die by that man,” she wrote of his remarks at the time.
Remembering Travis Charles of Canton
Ashley Charles, another sister to the deceased, said she had seen the hurt in the eyes of his son Khaine on Father’s Day weekend, and could not begin to feel the pain felt by a child whose father was murdered.
The boy learned to box like his father, who was nicknamed the Canton City Cobra.
“You took my brother, my baby brother,” Ashley Charles said while sobbing. “I don’t hate you, but I’m very, very disappointed. I just pray that one day you ask God to forgive you and He forgives you.”
Tashea Brown, Travis Charles’ older sister, told Cunningham he would probably die in prison.
“The night you shot my brother was purely unnecessary,” she said. “The night you pulled the trigger, you ended more than just my brother’s life. You ended the lives of everyone around you. For that, I feel you must pay.”
She referred to the fatal shooting that occurred at Cunningham’s house in the 1200 block of 16th Street NW in Canton. Charles, 31, went there in an unsuccessful attempt to pick up his child. He was shot when he was leaving the home, according to testimony.
“You turned a disagreement into murder for no reason other than your own anger,” Brown said. “There were so many other things you could have done, Shaun, but you chose to shoot.”
Shaun M. Cunningham during sentencing for murder conviction
Given the chance to speak on his own behalf before sentencing, Cunningham said that a part of him died on the night of the shooting.
“I assure you, no matter what you want to think, no matter how they want to say it, no matter how they want to twist it, no matter how they want to portray it, I was protecting my family,” he said. “The person that I love wasn’t who was at my house that night.”
He said Travis Charles was angry “and came at me like I was a stranger.”
“The last thing I wanted to do was kill Trav,” Cunningham said. “But I did want to stop him coming for me to get to my wife because they were arguing and fighting all day.”
The judge said state law dictated the sentence she gave to Cunningham, 49, for murder, felonious assault and using a gun in the crimes.
“Mr. Cunningham, I am baffled that you would continue to malign the character of the man you shot and killed when you were about to be sentenced by the court,” Hartnett said. “I suppose you perhaps feel that it doesn’t matter because there’s only one sentence that I can give. But I can assure you that it makes my job a whole lot easier to be able to pass this sentence when not once have I heard you say, ‘I was wrong. I shouldn’t have shot.'”
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Reach Nancy at 330-580-8382 or [email protected].
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