BILLINGS - A Billings teen has pleaded guilty to a charge of deliberate homicide for the shooting death of a Rocky Mountain College football player.
Sidney Cruz DeCrane Jr., appeared Tuesday before Yellowstone County District Court Judge Donald Harris and admitted to the charge for the Oct. 28, 2023 death of 18-year-old Chandler Stalcup. DeCrane was 16 at the time of the shooting, but he was prosecuted as an adult.
A plea agreement calls for prosecutors to recommend that DeCrane be sentenced to 75 years in prison. A sentencing hearing has yet to be scheduled. DeCrane remains in custody.
A co-defendant, Garrett Jarvis Door III, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, was sentenced in April to 60 years in prison, with 10 suspended, after pleading guilty to deliberate homicide by accountability.
Stalcup, a freshman at Rocky Mountain College from Florida, was shot after arriving to pick up a friend at a late-night house party where a fight broke out.
Authorities said Stalcup was an innocent victim who neither attended the party nor was involved in any of the fighting afterward.
Door had been knocked out in the fight in the area of the 1800 block of 15th Street West. He and other friends, including DeCrane, then began looking for another group, presumably seeking revenge.
Door was driving a vehicle in the area when his passenger, DeCrane, fired a bullet into a vehicle driven by Stalcup, who was struck in the head and later died in a hospital.
The teens were arrested the next day after police located a vehicle described as being involved in the fatal shooting at a residence on Sourdough Lane.
RELATED Q2 COVERAGE
Teen sentenced to 60 years in prison in killing of Rocky Mountain College football player
2 Billings teens charged as adults for shooting death of Rocky athlete
'Anger, fear, sadness:' Friends remember Rocky football player killed in shooting
Police suspect gang ties in shooting death of Rocky football player
