Sacramento man gets life without parole for 2018 ambush murder of Natomas librarian
Ronald Seay will spend the rest of his life in prison for the execution-style killing of a Natomas librarian in December 2018.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White sentenced Seay, 59, to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday on charges of first-degree murder and lying in wait in the shooting death of 41-year-old Amber Clark.
Clark was supervisor of the North Natomas library branch when she walked out of the library at the end of her shift Dec. 11, 2018, and was followed by Seay — a recent St. Louis transplant with a disturbing history of violent behavior that saw him arrested and barred from libraries there.
Seay waited for Clark in the library’s parking lot for nearly an hour. He opened Clark’s car door as she climbed inside and shot her 11 times with. a 9mm handgun at close range. Months earlier, in October 2018, Clark had barred Seay from the Natomas branch for threatening and disruptive behavior.
At Seay’s April murder trial, which followed lengthy delays first as doctors determined whether Seay was mentally fit to stand trial and then as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed back a trial date, jurors heard jail recordings of Seay explaining to family members why he murdered Clark.
“It’s what she did to me that broke the camel’s back; what she personally did to me,” Seay told his mother during a visit inside Sacramento County Jail in February 2019.
Seay was arrested the morning of Dec. 12, with the murder weapon and a second 9mm semi-automatic handgun stowed in his car.
A Sacramento Superior Court jury in April needed just hours to convict Seay of Clark’s murder.
On Friday, Amber Clark’s husband, Kelly Clark, addressed Seay, reading from the statement he’d written in 2019 before the trial was delayed.
“I’m glad he got to hear it,” Kelly Clark said Friday following the sentencing hearing. “I’m glad he got to hear what he stole from Amber and what he stole from us.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 6:09 PM.
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