Etidal Elbanna called her dad as she was leaving her job as a psychiatric nurse about 6:45 p.m. on Nov. 16, 2021.
The oldest of five kids, Etidal talked to her father nearly every day. If she had a tough shift at work, she knew he would lend an ear. When she was worn down, his wit and deep belly laugh lifted her spirits.
Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
Ali Elbanna, who was usually dependable, didn’t answer that evening or promptly call back. Etidal didn’t know then, but at 6:48 p.m., a group of teens approached Ali in a Costco Business Center parking lot.
Knock, knock.
At midnight, four solemn-faced police officers stood at the Elbanna family’s front door. They asked to speak with one of Ali’s daughters: “It’s regarding your father,” they said.
“Not my husband, please God, not my husband,” Ali’s wife, Stephanie, pleaded. Ali’s son, Sayed, screamed. Through phone calls, Ali’s brothers wailed, ripped open and shredded by grief.
Ring, ring.
The news knocked the air from Etidal’s lungs and wrenched her heart. At 2 a.m., she collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
The Elbanna family replayed those hours after their patriarch’s killing — and the agony of the roughly two-and-a-half years since his death — in court Monday, standing before two of the then-teens who robbed and fatally shot Ali as he was loading groceries into his car.
Moments earlier, the gunman, 18-year-old Camron Range, struck a plea deal with prosecutors. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison for Ali’s murder and 30 years for another aggravated robbery. The two sentences will run concurrently.
Range, who was 16 when he shot Ali and later charged as an adult, faced up to life in prison. He was initially charged with capital murder, but pleaded guilty to the lesser offense.
“It’s a sad deal all around,” Range’s attorney, Catherine Bernhard, told The Dallas Morning News inside the courtroom.
James Levels, 20, who also appeared in court Monday, entered a plea deal last week and was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder in connection with Ali’s killing and 25 years for a separate aggravated robbery, according to court records. The sentences will run concurrently.
“My client was sorry and remorseful for what had happened,” Levels’ attorney, Lalon “Clipper” Peale, said in a text message. “We are sorry for their loss.”
Another 20-year-old, Janiya Miller, is also charged in connection with Ali’s death. Her case is ongoing, according to court records. A fourth teen, Jacoby Bryce Tatum, was jailed on a capital murder charge, but a grand jury didn’t find sufficient evidence to indict him.
A spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office declined to comment, citing the pending cases.
In an op-ed for The News, Ali’s daughter Iman said Range had an extensive criminal. On Nov. 2, 2021, Dallas County juvenile court released Range on probation for burglary, “simply because there was no alternative placement for him at the time,” Iman wrote.
Range was wearing a defective ankle monitor and left home on Nov. 15 to steal a car, the family said.
The teens committed another robbery at gunpoint, stealing two cellphones, before Ali’s murder, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit. Those victims gave police a description of the robbers and traced the phones to NorthPark Center.
“My father was just seemingly collateral damage to you all on your rampage,” Etidal said, speaking to Range and Levels. A dozen family members gave victim impact statements on Monday, and about 25 people packed the pews of the 283rd district courtroom, holding framed photos of Ali through all phases of his life: sepia images of his boyhood, selfies with his five children and candid moments among fruit trees.
“And his life was the last thing you took,” Etidal said. Range and Levels fidgeted in their chairs. Several family members commented on how unabashed Range seemed. Levels, however, appeared to grow emotional, and at one point attempted to wipe his face on his beige, Dallas County jail uniform. His hands were shackled at his sides.
Ali, 60, came from humble beginnings. He was born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees and began working his way out of poverty as a child, selling and buying merchandise on the streets, before achieving his dream of owning his own business: a small wholesale shop in Arlington. He lived in Dallas-Fort Worth for more than 30 years.
Ali was a husband, a father, a brother and an uncle. To his children, he was a best friend, a closest confidant and a most trusted advisor. To his community, people said at his funeral, he was like a king.
He helped immigrants get on their feet, supported troubled youths and tended to the sick. His youngest daughter said she watched him chat up the cashier at H-E-B and encourage her to pursue her passions.
“There will never be a brighter light in this world,” Ali’s wife Stephanie Elbanna wrote in a statement read aloud by her daughter. “The darkness that remains is evidence that he’s not with us any longer, and every day that we are plunged into that darkness, know that it was your choices that brought us here.
“You have broken our hearts and shattered our lives forever. All the good that he did, and all the good he would have done, is undone because of you.”
The Elbanna children miss their father’s voice, the way he hummed, the sound of car rides and grocery store runs, of prayers at dawn and before bed. They miss that deep belly laugh, the way the smell of his coffee wafted up to their rooms in the morning. They grieve things that will never happen: father-daughter dances at weddings, grandpa holding his grandkids and future birthdays.
“You ended our lives the day you ended his,” the youngest daughter Stephanie said, her face reddening and hot, streaky tears falling down her face, ”you ended the perception that this world is a good place.”
Many of the family’s statements to Range and Levels focused on how their “impulsive, lethal actions” had a cascading ripple effect on Ali’s loved ones. State District Judge Lela Mays addressed Range and Levels: “You all will never get this time back that you have spent in jail and the time that’s going forward, so … try to see if you can grow, learn and be the person that Mr. Elbanna was. … Good luck to both of you.”
After the judge adjourned the hearing and people began shuffling out of the courtroom, someone in the gallery shouted, “I hope they rot in hell in jail.”
Speaking to a gaggle of reporters in the hallway, Elbanna’s children said they wanted life sentences for Levels and Range and felt the resolution wasn’t “full justice.”
