An 18-year-old convicted of murdering a Florida teenager will spend the rest of his life behind bars—and a judge refused his emotional request to hug his family one final time before he was taken away.
Thomas Stein was sentenced to life in prison for the March 2024 shooting death of 15-year-old Kayla Rincon-Miller, the State Attorney for Florida’s 20th Judicial Circuit announced on Friday, July 10.
Stein received the life sentence after being convicted of one felony count of first-degree murder. He was also handed an additional 45 years in prison—15 years for each of three counts of attempted robbery with a firearm. Those sentences will be served consecutively.
A jury found Stein guilty in May following a week-long trial.
Kayla was walking with two friends from a movie theater to a McDonald’s in Cape Coral when Stein and his friend, Christopher Horne Jr., allegedly targeted the girls at random.
According to prosecutors, Stein and Horne were driving around in a silver Nissan Pathfinder that Stein’s mother had rented. The pair had reportedly been looking for vehicles to burglarize when they spotted Kayla and her friends and decided to rob them.
Stein drove past the girls twice and flashed the SUV’s high beams in their faces before stopping near them. Moments later, a gun was fired at close range.
Stein and Horne fled the scene while Kayla’s friends desperately tried to save her. The teenager was rushed to a hospital, where she died shortly afterward.
Stein maintained throughout the trial that he was present when Kayla was killed but did not fire the fatal shot.
His defense attorneys asked the judge to sentence him to 25 years in prison, matching the punishment Horne received in May after agreeing to testify against Stein as part of a plea deal, Court TV reported.
When given the opportunity to speak during his July 10 sentencing, Stein did not ask the judge for a particular sentence. Instead, he made a personal request.
“If I could just ask you one thing, if before I walk out of the courtroom, if I could give my family a hug, if you’d allow that?” Stein asked Judge Nick Thompson, according to Court TV.
The judge immediately denied the request.
“I can’t grant that request in here,” Thompson responded. “You can say goodbye, but you can’t have any physical contact.”
Stein then addressed his role in the deadly crime, acknowledging that his actions helped the others involved escape.
“I didn’t know that robbery was going to occur, but it was my reaction in fleeing that ultimately played a major role in assisting the perpetrators,” Stein said. “I know that it wasn’t my intentions, but the truth is it doesn’t change the result. It doesn’t change the fact that there was a life taken and innocent people were forever traumatized because of that.”
He also said he regretted getting behind the wheel that day.
“That day I made a terrible decision,” Stein continued. “The decision to get behind the wheel was a total act of selfishness and something I regret and I’m ashamed of every day.”
Before leaving the courtroom, Stein was allowed to briefly speak with his family, but he was not permitted to touch or embrace them.
Kayla’s friends, Louann Dejaie and Emma Wright, also delivered heartbreaking statements in court about the lasting trauma they have endured since witnessing her death.
“I have been bullied and discouraged,” Wright said. “People tried to blame me and my friend Dejaie for this act of violence.”
Dejaie described feeling unable to escape the grief of losing her friend.
“I feel like I’m trapped in a coma that I can’t wake up from,” she said. “Like I’m suffocating, but somehow still expected to keep on living. Losing Kayla changed every part of my life.”
Glad he is remorseful and seemed to have suddenly learned something