Carthage man handed 30-year term for slaying at Joplin mini-storage business

Apr. 9—Mason Roach took the witness box Tuesday at his sentencing for second-degree murder to apologize to the family of Jonathan Powell, whom he fatally shot in a jealous rage.

"There's never a day goes by I don't regret my actions," Roach told the court before Judge Gayle Crane sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

The 28-year-old defendant and father of three children said that at the time of Powell's slaying more than four years ago he and his wife were in a turbulent marriage plagued by mutual drug abuse.

Police say Powell was shot three times in the early morning hours of Dec. 18, 2019, at the Westside Mini-Storage business on South Roosevelt Avenue in Joplin after Roach learned of some messages between his wife and Powell that touched off a jealous rage.

Officers responded to a report of trouble at the business shortly after the shooting, but the murder remained unsolved for several months before investigators finally learned what happened from the defendant's wife, Roxi Roach-Mills, who was in her husband's company at the time.

She told them he forced her into a car at gunpoint that night in Carl Junction and drove her to the storage business to confront Powell. The victim approached their car as they arrived, and her husband put a handgun to her head.

She leaned forward in her seat to avoid being shot by Roach in the driver's seat, and he discharged several rounds through the front passenger-side window beside her. When police finally located the Nissan Altima that he was driving, they found broken glass on the passenger-side floorboard. The door panel on the passenger side had been removed and the window replaced with plexiglass.

The probable-cause affidavit filed in the case states that investigators also learned that the defendant separately confessed to three people over the course of the month following the shooting that he had killed Powell.

About three weeks after the crime, the defendant was arrested in Oklahoma in possession of a pickup truck stolen in Sarcoxie and served about two years there before being returned to Missouri for prosecution on the murder charge.

He appeared in court Tuesday with several facial tattoos, which he explained that he acquired while in prison both as an expression of his Native American heritage and his love for family members who had died. He said he became a born-again Christian while incarcerated and was "at peace with God and his family" now and wishes the same for his victim's family and loved ones.

None of Powell's family were able to attend the sentencing. His mother, Robin Wright, who lives in another state and has health issues that prevented her from being there, sent a victim-impact letter that Assistant Prosecutor Taylor Haas presented to the court.

"We don't need sympathy and your meaningless prayers," Wright wrote in the letter. "We need Roach sentenced to the max that a second-degree murder charge can carry."

She wrote that she believes his crime was a premeditated act and asked that his prison time in Oklahoma on the stolen truck conviction not be counted as time served for her son's murder. She said she had hoped that he would be given the death penalty until her faith's bishop convinced her otherwise.

Looking ahead to his term of imprisonment in Missouri, she wrote: "We need the parole board to realize that Roach is capable of killing again."

She said Jonathan was "an entrepreneur, a musician and a great son," who provided her the gift of three grandchildren, the youngest of whom was just 2 months old at the time of the murder. She said Jonathan was planning to come home that Christmas and to bring that newborn daughter and another of his children with her and her mother.

"That didn't happen, thanks to the murder," she wrote.

Defense attorney Rachel Fisher asked the court to consider giving her client a 25-year sentence in light of his remorse and the goals he had set for himself while locked up. Haas told the judge that the prosecutor's office still believed he should receive the full 30 years that a life sentence with a chance of parole carries under Missouri law.

The judge concurred with the state and applied the maximum sentence.

Jeff Lehr is a reporter for The Joplin Globe.