>A month before his 17th birthday, Kevin Nelms joined his older friend for a planned robbery of a West Palm Beach pawnshop. Instead of a gun or a knife, they brought gasoline and a Molotov cocktail.
>About 11 a.m. Jan. 4, 1984, the friend, Ontra Jones, dumped a bucket of fuel on Robert Hansen Jr., a part-time employee working out front. Then Nelms tossed a lighted candle stuffed in a beer bottle and set Hansen afire.
>Minutes later, police and firefighters responded to the store and Hansen, 59, cried, “Why me? Why me?” and urged them to end his life and his terrible pain. He died 11 hours later in the burn unit of a Miami hospital.
>This horror was recalled in a courtroom Thursday as Nelms, now 50, asked for his life-in-prison sentence to be reduced to time already served, or 12,231 days. Circuit Judge Charles Burton denied Nelms, remarking, “In terms of the victim’s suffering, this is one of the worst cases this court has seen in more than 30 years.”
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-pn-kevin-nelms-murder-resentencing-20170629-story.html