The last of three men who took part in a 2024 Columbia shooting sparked by a dispute over a missing cellphone has been sentenced to prison.
Lancaster County Judge Todd Brown sentenced Isaiah Jose Diaz, 22, of Columbia, to 2½ to six years in state prison on May 28 for two counts of aggravated assault, conspiracy and related offenses.
Diaz pleaded guilty to the charges on Feb. 12.
According to Columbia police, on Nov. 1, 2024, Diaz, Caelan Natrell Brown, 20, of Columbia, and J’vian Mendez-Gonzalez, 20, of Lancaster, tracked two men to a house on the 400 block of Avenue K after a fight at a smoke shop. Mendez-Gonzalez shot at the house.
Brown dropped his cellphone during the fight and Brown, Mendez-Gonzalez and Diaz mistakenly believed one of the men they were fighting took the phone.
Several people were inside the residence when the shooting happened, but no one was injured.
Diaz told police he supplied the guns and hid them in his apartment’s ceiling after the shooting, according to charging documents.
Brown pleaded guilty last August and was sentenced to two to five years in state prison.
Mendez-Gonzalez pleaded guilty to his role in the shooting in January and he pleaded guilty in several other cases including kidnapping, for forcing a woman to get in his car after an argument in August 2024 in Lancaster city, and a May 2024 simple assault in Lancaster city.
Mendez-Gonzalez was sentenced to a total of three to eight years in state prison for all the cases.
Columbia Spy 