IOWA CITY, Iowa — Renard Winfield Jr., the Indiana man convicted of luring an Iowa City man to his death by posing as a woman on a dating app, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Friday.
Winfield Jr. maintained his innocence, claiming he was wrongfully convicted. “First of all, I want to commence by saying that I give my deepest sympathies to the victim’s family. I know they want nothing but justice, but no justice is being served here. I am being convicted of a crime I didn’t commit,” he said.
Prosecutors argue that Winfield Jr. shot and killed Tommy Curry in April 2021 as an act of revenge. Winfield Jr. claimed Curry had shot him the year prior, but no charges were filed in that case as Winfield Jr. refused to identify the shooter.
Court testimony revealed that Winfield Jr. used the dating app Plenty of Fish to pose as a woman and lure Curry out. Curry, believing he was meeting a woman for a date, drove to the Meadow Lark Apartments in Iowa City. As Curry waited in his car, Winfield Jr. fired 15 shots at him, killing him on the spot.
In her victim impact statement, read by a lawyer, Curry’s fiancée Shanel Franklin described the loss of her partner and the emotional toll on their four children. She spoke of Curry’s hard work at Amazon and his dreams of advancing in life, including becoming a truck driver. “He made mistakes, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die for it,” she said, highlighting how difficult it has been for her daughters without their father.
The sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole was mandatory, as it comes with all first-degree murder convictions in Iowa.
