Woman gets 50 years for murdering woman over purse
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Tears are the same in any language.
Kenia Wilkins, 24, didn't move when an eyewitness described how Wilkins shot Meng Bo in 2016.
Court records claim Wilkins said "she shot the b****" when Bo wouldn't give up her purse.
READ MORE: Young woman fatally shot in west Houston
Wilkins also didn't cry when a judge sentenced her on Wednesday to 50 years in a Texas prison. She just held her head in her hands.
She didn't break down when her friend sobbed in the courtroom upon hearing the sentence.
But when the victim's father, Bo Zhansheng, a distinguished Chinese doctor, husband and father of two, took the stand, Wilkins started paying attention.
When he said, through a translator, that his son had quit school and his wife, Bao Yunxia, tried to kill herself out of grief, grown men cried in the gallery before the translator explained it to the rest of us.
And when her father ended his sometimes teary translated statement saying he was forced to skip the Chinese New Year festival at home in China to come the U.S. to "confront the woman who so cruelly killed his daughter," Wilkins finally seemed to choke back a tear.
Minutes later, Wilkins disappeared in shackles behind a locked door.
Meng Bo's family was told the "proceedings are over."
Their grief isn't.
Murder trials don't have winners and they don't bring back victims. They do expose the deep wounds that senseless violence inflicts on everyone involved.
