Teen to be sentenced Friday for Ballard murder

Geeky Swedes Ballard

Seventeen-year-old Elijah Hall will be sentenced on Friday for the murder of Manish Melwani at a convenience store in Ballard on July 26, 2009. He was arrested the following day and pleaded guilty in November.

According to our news partners, the Seattle Times, prosecutors will ask for a 23-year-sentence, which is a middle of the range sentence. The paper spoke with Hall’s mother who says, “He’s 17 years old; he’s a young man. He’s a child still,” Lori Hilliard said of her son. “He’s a very compassionate young man, with a heart and feelings. It’s unfortunate he made a bad decision.” Melwani’s family was not available to comment but is expected to speak at Friday’s hearing in King County Superior Court.

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The founders of My Ballard

38 thoughts to “Teen to be sentenced Friday for Ballard murder”

  1. Great, he'll be out by age 40. He should get 40 yrs minimum. Not a day less to this POS. His mom should suffer with him for raising such a piece of garbage.

    All my sympathies to Melwani's family; you came here to work hard for the American dream and lose your life to a scum bag who's never done an honest days work.

  4. Compassionate? Horse puckey! This kid is a murderer who should have been locked away until he was too old and infirm to do any more nasty crimes. Maybe his clueless mother should be sharing the cell with him.

  5. no one wins in these situations. i must say, 23 years is not enough. i think this kid should get life in prison, and spend every Friday talking to high school students about the dangers of making poor decisions. the only way to grow from this tragedy is to teach other youth of the repercussions.

  7. This security camera photo is scary. He's dressed like a video game ninja and pointing a gun at his unarmed victim. A very serious scene of armed robbery and murder captured in the photo. A punk willing to kill for a few dollars.
    His sentence should be nothing less than life in prison with no parole. If he didn't know right from wrong by now, there's not much hope for this criminal. The general public deserves protection from defective people like this.

  10. How long will this murderer actually serve with a 23 year sentence? He'll probably be out of prison while still in his 20's!

    He committed homicide in the first degree during the commission of a felony. If he didn't mean to kill anyone, he would not have loaded the gun, much less tried to rob the store. (Not his first time committing robbery, either!) His excuse that he “needed money” is total crap. He was living with his mother! Maybe she should be prosecuted as an accessory if she knew he was a minor in possession of a handgun.

    King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg had a great editorial in the Seattle Times recently about the need for changes in our laws regarding kids with guns. Read it here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2…

  11. What the mother said is unbelievable:

    “Lori Hilliard said of her son. “He’s a very compassionate young man, with a heart and feelings. It’s unfortunate he made a bad decision.”

    Exactly how has he displayed any compassion? What compassion did he show his victim?

    And how is murder merely a “bad decision” –? It grossly understates the gravity of what happened and sickeningly devalues the life that was lost.

    What that kid did was calculated and deliberate. He killed that young man in cold blood, and right in our neighborhood. If this story is accurate, and they target twenty-three years, it makes me furious.

  12. In no way do I want to defend this kid, but you should at least have the facts…
    He came in to the store and tried to open the register while Manesh was in the back room. Manesh came out and saw him and rushed him. Elijah maintains that he tried to shoot Manesh in the leg so he could get away. You can even see him pointing the gun low in the photo, not like he's aiming for a headshot.
    While I doubt that Elijah Hall was planning on killing someone that day, he did make the choice to bring a gun and load it with real bullets. He made the choice and is ultimately responsible for it, but let's not confuse his actions with someone who plans to kill from the outset.
    Elijah Hall still killed this man. He is responsible for that and should be punished, and for more than 23 years in my opinion. But let's at least understand a little bit more of what actually happened instead of imagining him to be worse so we can justify our outrage.

  13. The first thing I was ever taught about firearms was that <YOUDO NOT POINT A GUN AT SOMEONE UNLESS YOU HAVE THE INTENTION OF FIRING AT THEM> This applies in any scenario when you may have a gun in your hand – if you are defending yourself or otherwise the moment you pick up the gun you are essentialy making that decision to use it and are responsible for the outcome. There's no such thing as I only meant to kill him a little.

    You are probably correct in that he did not plan on killing anyone, but that is exactly the problem. He acted without thinking about any consequences of his actions and this initself makes him a dangerous criminal and an overall thoughtless being.

  14. Wow SPG, you surprise me. By stating that the kid wasin't “aiming for a headshot”, you ARE in fact defending him.

    True that he may have thought he could just grab cash out of the register while Manesh was in the back room, but the fact that he took a loaded pistol into the store and then fired it at Manesh negates any and all excuses that he didn't mean “to kill from the outset.” Why else would he have taken a loaded gun? And this isn't his first time robbing/assaulting someone, don't forget.

    It's like saying an arsonist didn't mean to kill the shopkeeper sleeping in his store because the lights were off and he thought the place was empty before he torched it. (A scenario we almost had in Greenwood).

    I, for one, do imagine Elijah Hall to be “worse”, and what he did should make us outraged. We get so numb to violence that we now justify and rationalize it when it happens. I hope he spends the rest of his life in prison. There's no justification (such as “youthful indescrection” or “bad judgement”) that warrants letting him walk our streets again.

  15. I'm not going to defend the kid, but I do feel sorry for his mother, and don't blame her for trying to say something about the good she saw in him. I don't expect an utterly balanced, fair, perfectly worded statement from the mother of someone who's just been declared guilty of murder.

  16. Good to see all of Ballard's usual moral relativists are out. I guess since he was just some dark skinned, hard working immigrant and family man, some people think this POS's life is worthy of examination and understanding.

    The good news is he is short and young; they'll love him in Monroe.

  17. Sorry for the poor sentence structure, I think every knows the POS = the scum bag murderer whose name is not even worthy of being typed.

  20. Yeah, apparently to some here what a little thug like this does is the fault of the parents. Sheesh!
    She may know in the back of her mind her kid is a thug, but she's still his mother.

  21. Who are these “usual moral relativists” you speak of? It looks to me most everybody has responded with distain for the killer and his length of sentence, with the exception of somebody attempted to defend his mother's words.

    But go ahead – keep going with the exceedingly tired attacks on how folks in this town supposedly think.

  22. He'll be out this decade, still in his twenties, and far more equipt to continue in his mind set. He'll make new friends, learn some neat stuff about how to become a more accomplished criminal, maybe get a good tattoo or two.
    That said, at least he'll end up serving more than ten times what the punks who killed Tuba Man got. Seattle isn't capable of taking these issues seriously.

  23. well, the good news is the kid is more likely to actually get that diploma his mother says was her dream now that he is going to prison. With any luck, he will hook up with someone who insists he get an education while inside.

    The bad news is an 18 year old in prison is going to have a hellish time since chances are he is not going to hook up with any responsible people.

  26. Would?

    I believe you mean 'would', if only he wasn't on his way to being someone's little play thing at Monroe; I may be square but no one's ever used me as his girlfriend in jail.

    Glad to see this POS scummy friends have found the blog. I seem to remember at the time of the shooting the myballard comments were filled by Hall's semi-literate friends, only proving what a bunch of morons and scum bags him and his friends are. Trailer trash with homes.

  27. Trailer trash with homes? Atleast it's not the microsoft california dreaming hipster n00bs from everywhere but seattle trying to take over our city and making it harder for all the locals to get ours.

    seattle locals know and the rest of you bustas is hoe blow

  28. “making it harder for all the locals to get ours.”

    Maybe if you little boys learned to spell, you'd be able to get yours, instead of shooting hard working immigrants.

    Better run upstairs now, before your moms turn off your wifi.

  30. Yep, you're right. I was always told you don't point a gun at someone unless you plan to kill them. The same reason the police don't have such a thing as shoot to wound.

  31. I suppose that in explaining the facts it could come off as a defense, but yet I can't justify what this kid did. He was wrong to think he could rob a store to get money. He was wrong to bring a loaded gun. He was wrong to think he could shoot someone and not kill them. He was wrong in so many ways. He did a horrible indefensible thing, but on some level I guess I do recognize that as bad as it was, he might not be as bad as some are making him out to be.
    Is a premeditated murder the same as a murder in a robbery? Not to play it down, but why do we have different degrees of murder unless accidentally running someone over with your car is going to be treated the same as planning a killing? We don't execute people who run stop signs and we don't write tickets to people who murder others for a few bucks from the register. There are relative sentences for the respective crimes and when the prosecutors weigh the facts of the case, they might not be as inclined as some of the people in the neighborhood to press for the strictest sentence.

  32. Since he is going to get out eventually, I'd much rather have a rehabilitated criminal who has a shot at being a productive member of society when they get out instead of a pissed off criminal likely to offend again.

  35. hmm… I wonder what he needed money for? By the looks of his dress it was for more spraypaint to tag your fences and homes. I'm gonna assume his life of crime didn't start with armed robbery; but rather graffiti and vandalism. What 17-year-old gun-carrying thug wanna-be DOESN'T mark his “territory” by writing his name everywhere with markers and/or spraypaint???

    If my assumptions are correct… one less tagger in Ballard. Horray!

  36. Exactly – if we want to throw out the “he didn't mean to kill him” defense then why don't these same people come out in favor of lifetime sentences for DUI resulting in a death. How is it any different? A car is a FAR deadlier weapon than a gun (the numbers don't lie on this one!) and if you get behind the wheel while drunk you know damn well there's a good chance you could hurt someone. There's no excuse for drunk driving but whenever someone kills someone with a car we're perfectly content to dismiss it as an “accident”. In both cases you're knowingly using a deadly weapon while doing something illegal yet people don't treat them the same – go figure. Some people just don't seem to get it.

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