The mother of a slain Kansas woman who was fatally shot during a domestic dispute ripped into her son-in-law at his sentencing for asking for his PlayStation just after her death.
Michael Edgington was sentenced for voluntary manslaughter after taking a plea deal in the death of his 25-year-old wife Sydney Palmer, who was killed on July 3, 2023, at their home in Wellington.
Before he was sentenced on Monday, Palmer’s mother, Emma Cooley, reminded Edgington of what he said to her just after he gunned down her daughter.
“The first thing you asked me is for the PlayStation,” Cooley told him in court, according to the local news outlet Sumner NewsCow. “Well, here’s your PlayStation,” she added as she placed the video game console on the bench.
Edgington and Palmer were having a fight on the afternoon of July 3 when she allegedly threw a 4.04-ounce concrete figurine at his head, according to a police report in which an officer noted a bump on Edgington’s forehead.
Edgington then shot Palmer with a 9 mm pistol, police said. The mother-of-three was rushed to the hospital where she later died.
“She loved you,” Cooley told him during the emotional hearing. “Even in her last breath to law enforcement, she didn’t want to admit you killed her. She was always trying to protect you.”
Cooley also lambasted her son-in-law for getting remarried in the house he shared with her daughter after he killed her.
“This is the place where you killed your ex-wife and my daughter,” Cooley told him. “And you have a wedding there as if she hadn’t existed.”
Edgington has repeatedly claimed in previous police interviews that he was acting in self-defense when he shot Palmer and that his wife had suffered manic episodes.
He claimed that a doctor had taken her off her medication and that she would get angry at him for not taking out the trash. When she started breaking things and Edgington tried to get her to stop, that’s when she “took a concrete figurine and threatened to throw it at me,” he said. “I told her to stop. She threw it at me and hit me in the head.”
Sumner County District Court Judge William Mott sentenced Edgington to 61 months in prison, the maximum sentence allowed, along with 36 months of probation.
“I understand I did something wrong,” Edgington told the court. “But I don’t feel I am a threat to society.”
Edgington, who served 10 months in custody before posting bond in May of 2024, will serve five years and one month in state prison, Sumner NewsCow reported.
He will then serve 36 months on probation after his release and he will not be allowed to possess firearms during this time.
Family members cheered and hugged each other after the judge handed down the sentence for Edgington, ending a nearly two-year ordeal.
