PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, VA – A 27-year-old man has been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for the 2023 murder of a Manassas man, prosecutors announced Friday.
Bobby Damont Goss, 27, was sentenced on Thursday to 45 years in prison, with 23 years and one month suspended – a term at the high end of state sentencing guidelines, the Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office said. Gross appears to have been given the maximum sentence for both charges under Virginia law before the suspension of half the years of active incarceration. The minimum term for second-degree murder is five years in prison.
Gross had pleaded to second-degree murder and stabbing in the commission of murder over the death of 25-year-old Todd Ehardt in August 2023.
Prosecutors say Gross and Ehardt got into a physical fight on the night of Aug. 23, 2023, at 7421 Sudley Rd. in Manassas that escalated when Gross pulled out a knife. They say eyewitnesses described seeing Gross stab Ehardt in the chest, a wound that severed his trachea and caused massive bleeding. He died not long after the attack in a nearby hospital.
Upon Gross' release from prison, he is to serve five years of probation and five more under post-release supervision, the Commonwealth Attorney's Office says.
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