The death of a Delaware police officer in the line of duty back in 2021 shocked the conscience of the community he served, and now, according to the state's high court, the man convicted of the heinous crime will remain in prison for the rest of his life.
An appeal pursued by Randon Wilkerson, the individual convicted of killing Cpl. Keith Heacook, has been denied by the Supreme Court of Delaware, leaving the murder with his original sentence of two life sentences plus 212 years and 30 days, as CBS affiliate WBOC reports.
It was on the morning of April 25, 2021, that 22-year Delmar Police Department veteran Heacook was responding to a 911 domestic violence call, as the Delaware attorney general's office outlined in a press release following Wilkerson's conviction.
Wilkerson proceeded to attack the responding officer, delivering a series of blows to the head which resulted in Heacook's death later in the week.
Eventually, Wilkerson was taken into custody and charged not just with Heacook's killing, but also with the assault of two elderly individuals on the same day.
The events of that fateful day prompted the state to charge Wilkerson with two first-degree murder charges, five counts of possessing a deadly weapon while committing a felony, three counts of deadly weapon possession by a prohibited person, two counts of first-degree assault, and a host of other counts.
Wilkerson's conviction was announced on October 16, 2023, though that was unfortunately not the end of the legal saga to which Heacook's family and community were subjected, as the convicted killer proceeded to file appeals up to the state's highest court.
It was in February 2024 that Wilkerson filed his appeal with the Delaware high court, and his main argument was that he had inadvertently taken bath salts, rather than methamphetamine as he intended to, on the day of his encounter with Heacook.
However, the involuntary intoxication contention pursued by Wilkerson at the high court did not find a receptive audience among the justices.
In the court's opinion, the justices noted that Wilkerson was a “veteran” abuser of drugs that included crack, heroin, and cocaine, as well as alcohol and cited a toxicology screening done on the day of his arrest that revealed the presence of methamphetamine, cocaine, as well as fentanyl – but not the bath salts he claimed.
A subsequent effort to prove the presence of bath salts in Wilkerson's blood was inconclusive, and he was eventually convicted in a jury trial, a development that led to his high court appeal.
The high court concluded in pertinent part, “We hold that a person who knowingly introduces an unlawful intoxicating substance into his or her body is precluded from presented an involuntary intoxication defense unless certain statutory exceptions apply,” leaving Wilkerson's conviction and sentence intact.
That Wilkerson will remain in prison for the remainder of his natural life will hopefully provide some degree of closure for the wife and son Cpl. Heacook was left behind, but his permanent absence from their lives can certainly never be properly remedied.
The community assuredly takes some degree of comfort that justice has been conclusively served in the death of a dedicated public servant whose commitment to helping others continued even after his death in the form of organ donation, as a tribute on the Officer Down Memorial Page respectfully reveals.
