Kemaree Davis was sentenced to 20 to 60 years after pleading no contest in the 2025 shooting death of Thomas Stewart.

MUSKEGON, Mich. — A Michigan teenager who was prosecuted as an adult after fatally shooting a 73-year-old neighbor during a robbery has been sentenced to 20 to 60 years in prison, closing the main criminal case nearly 10 months after Thomas Stewart was found dead inside his Muskegon home. Kemaree Davis, 16, received the sentence Sept. 22 in Muskegon County Circuit Court after entering a no-contest plea in August. Local reporting described the murder conviction as second-degree murder, while earlier court records and charging reports referred to an open-murder charge.

The sentence places Davis in state prison for a crime committed while he was still a minor and gives the case a sharply different ending from where it began in December 2025: as an investigation into the killing of a well-known older man who police said had welcomed and helped people in his neighborhood. Stewart was already battling cancer when he was killed. His family told the court that he weighed about 100 pounds and was remembered by relatives and neighbors as “Uncle Tommy,” a man who tried to help others and encouraged his children to succeed.

The punishment imposed by Circuit Judge Matthew R. Kacel included the 20-to-60-year term on the murder conviction as well as sentences for two weapons offenses. Davis received two years for felony firearm use and two to five years for carrying a concealed weapon, according to reports of the sentencing. The weapons sentences were ordered to run concurrently. Davis also received credit for 288 days already served on the weapons counts, but reporting on the court records said that credit did not apply to the murder sentence. Under Michigan law, second-degree murder may be punished by life imprisonment or a term of years, and state law requires juveniles convicted of second-degree murder to be sentenced in the same manner as adults.

What brought Davis to that sentencing hearing began shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2025, when Muskegon public safety officers were sent to a home in the 1400 block of Jiroch Street after a report that a man had been shot. Officers found Stewart inside with a gunshot wound to his upper body. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators said his wallet was lying near his body and his pockets appeared to have been turned out. Those details became part of the evidence that led police to believe the shooting was connected to a robbery rather than a random attack by an unknown intruder.

Police soon focused on Davis, who knew Stewart from the neighborhood. Surveillance evidence showed the teenager entering and leaving the residence, according to reports of the investigation. Muskegon Public Safety Director Tim Kozal said after the arrest that investigators believed Stewart knew the person who came into his home and that Stewart had been friendly and helpful to many people nearby. Detectives believed Stewart and the shooter were the only people inside the house when the killing occurred. Davis was arrested about a week after Stewart’s death and was charged as an adult.

Investigators said Davis eventually acknowledged that he had gone to Stewart’s home intending to rob him. According to testimony and reports describing his police interview, Davis said Stewart encountered him inside the residence and gave him $20. Davis told investigators that the firearm then “went off.” After Stewart was shot, Davis admitted taking another $20 from his wallet, investigators said. The account did not erase the robbery evidence prosecutors had assembled, and the case continued with the shooting, the money and Davis’ actions afterward forming important parts of the prosecution’s reconstruction of what happened.

Among the most consequential pieces of evidence was a message investigators said Davis sent to a 17-year-old friend about an hour after Stewart was shot. In the message, Davis said, “The old man is dead,” and described watching Stewart take his final breaths. A detective testified about that communication during a preliminary examination in March. Prosecutors also relied on witness testimony, surveillance material and other investigative evidence. The 17-year-old who received the message had separately been accused of a weapons offense connected to the investigation, and earlier reporting said he was later arrested on a perjury allegation after testimony that investigators said conflicted with other evidence.

The case had initially been announced publicly as an open-murder prosecution. In December, Kozal said authorities were confident the 16-year-old was the person who fired the fatal shot and said the killing appeared to be robbery-related. Davis later resolved the case without a trial by entering a no-contest plea. A no-contest plea allows a court to enter a conviction without requiring the defendant to make the same factual admission that accompanies a guilty plea. Local coverage of the August plea and September sentencing identified the resulting homicide conviction as second-degree murder. That distinction is significant because Michigan law allows a court to impose life imprisonment or any term of years for second-degree murder.

By the time of sentencing, the focus in the courtroom shifted from the evidence used to build the case to the consequences of Stewart’s death. Members of Stewart’s family described a father whose health had already been failing because of cancer but whose influence remained strong. His son Terrance Stewart told the court that his father pushed his children to pursue their goals and become better people. Another son, Dalrecus Stewart, spoke about confronting the reality that the person responsible for his father’s death was himself a teenager. He said his father’s example kept him from allowing anger to define his response.

Davis also spoke. He apologized to Stewart’s family and said Stewart had been a kind and caring man. His remarks stood in stark contrast to the message prosecutors said he sent shortly after the shooting, a communication that became one of the case’s most widely reported pieces of evidence. At sentencing, however, the court was no longer deciding whether prosecutors had enough evidence to proceed. Davis had already entered his plea, and the question before the judge was the punishment for a homicide that had taken the life of an older neighbor and placed a teenager into the adult correctional system.

The prosecution also unfolded against broader concern in Muskegon about young people becoming involved in serious violence. When police announced Davis’ arrest in December, Kozal called the involvement of teenagers in violent crimes tragic and said the community needed to confront the pattern. His comments came as investigators were explaining why Davis, despite being 16, had entered the adult criminal process. Michigan law permits prosecutors to charge juveniles between 14 and 18 as adults for specified serious offenses, and a juvenile convicted of second-degree murder is among those who must receive an adult sentence. Davis’ age therefore remained central to the public discussion around the case even though it did not keep the court from imposing a decades-long prison term.

Stewart’s vulnerability added another layer to the family’s account of the loss. He was 73, fighting cancer and, according to his son, had fallen to roughly 100 pounds. Yet police and relatives described him not primarily through his illness but through the relationships he had built. Investigators said he was known to Davis, while Kozal described Stewart as someone who was friendly with and helpful to many people around him. Those relationships helped explain why police believed Davis may have been allowed into the residence and why the killing reverberated beyond Stewart’s immediate family.

The sentencing resolves Davis’ murder case at the trial-court level and requires him to serve the prison term imposed by Kacel, subject to whatever review or other legal proceedings may be available under Michigan law. The record described in sentencing reports leaves the core outcome clear: Stewart was killed in his Jiroch Street home on Dec. 1, 2025, Davis entered a no-contest plea the following August, and a judge sentenced the 16-year-old to a minimum of 20 years in state prison in September 2026.

Author note: Last updated November 8, 2026.