A 20-year-old Laurel man will serve 20 years with the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC) for shooting his father to death on March 3.

It was one of three sentencings handed down Monday in Jones County.

Matthew Wood, indicted on a charge of murder, entered a guilty plea to manslaughter Monday morning in Jones County Circuit Court following a plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office. Judge Billy Joe Landrum accepted the plea and sentenced Wood to the maximum 20-year sentence on a manslaughter charge.

He pleaded guilty to shooting his father, Maurice Wood, in the back of the head at their residence on South Radio Road. Wood was shot once in the back of the head with a semi-automatic handgun. District Attorney Tony Buckley said the plea agreement was allowed only after the request of the victim’s wife, also the defendant’s mother.

Wood was sentenced to serve an additional seven years on an unrelated charge of house burglary about two weeks prior to the shooting.

Burglar gets 25 years

Judge Landrum sentenced James Lee Miller, 32, no address listed, to serve 25 years with the DOC on two counts of burglary and one count of assault which occurred in November 2007. One burglary was to a residence on Indian Springs Church Road and the other burglary was to a residence on Indian Springs Road.

Miller was charged with assault in connection with hitting the elderly homeowner in the head several times with a vase in the second residential break-in. The victim was in his early 80s. “It was a bad crime, and it’s always worse with elderly people,” Buckley said. “That is why he received such a stiff sentence.”

Buckley said Miller was homeless and had been living in the woods when the burglaries occurred.

Perkins to serve 13 years

Michael Chance Perkins, 20, was sentenced to serve 13 years after pleading guilty to aggravated assault in connection with the November 2007 shooting of Matthew Navoa, also 20. Navoa was shot several times near Sandersville following an altercation with Perkins — once in the chest and several times in the arm with a .22 handgun.

“Only by a miracle is Michael Navoa alive,” Buckley said. “Young people need to understand that there are serious consequences for committing violent crimes.”