By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
A 43-year-old Pensacola, Fla. man, treated lightly by the justice system after the first time he killed an Atmore man, wasn’t so lucky the second time around.
A jury found Antonio Albert Crenshaw guilty October 11 of the fatal 2020 stabbing and shooting of 43-year-old Atmore resident Desmond Deshun Dirden, and Crenshaw was sentenced December 3 to serve 720 months (60 years) in state prison.
According to records on file with Clerk of Court John R. Fountain’s office, District Attorney Steve Billy was able to prove to the panel beyond a reasonable doubt that Crenshaw caused the wounds that left Dirden bleeding to death on a Patterson Street sidewalk.
Retired 19th Judicial Circuit Judge Ben Fuller, who presided over the trial, passed sentence.
Crenshaw was released from the Escambia County Detention Center (ECDC) in 2023 after his bond was reduced from $500,00 to $150,000. He was rearrested in February 2024 after data from a Community Corrections ankle bracelet revealed he had committed several violations of the bond’s conditions.
According to the ECDC website, Crenshaw remained in the county jail early Tuesday, December 17, awaiting transfer to state custody.
The Florida man has a violent criminal history but has never been severely punished for his actions.
He was initially charged with capital murder in the 2011 shooting death of Christopher Payne Andrews, a former three-sport letterman at Escambia County High School who was found lying by his vehicle, dead from several bullet wounds, on Maxwell Street.
Crenshaw accepted a plea deal in 2013 that lowered the charge to manslaughter in exchange for a 20-year split sentence that required him to serve at least 42 months in state prison.
Alabama Department of Corrections records don’t yet show how much of the sentence, if any, he served on that charge and those records won’t be updated until after Crenshaw enters a state correctional facility.