44-year-old Wichita man with long criminal history gets 70 years in murder, official says

A 44-year-old Wichita man with a long criminal history was sentenced Friday to 70 years in prison for a Dec. 2, 2020, fatal shooting in south Wichita, according to the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office.

A jury found Christopher Eugene English, also known as Tommy Boy, guilty in December of first-degree murder, criminal discharge of a firearm and possession of a weapon by a felon in the killing of 49-year-old Michael Horn, who was found shot in the head at a home in the 1800 block of South Main.

English was arrested in connection with the killing in July 2022, the same week he was sentenced to a decade in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. A gun was found under his seat on May 11, 2020, court records show. Those sentences will run consecutively with the 70 years.

English’s first conviction was in 1992 for a child sex crime when he was 11 years old. He was then sentenced when he was an adult in 2000 to seven years in federal prison for brandishing a firearm during a violent crime.

In May 2019, a few months after being released from prison, he was a passenger in a stolen BMW SUV that sparked a police chase in downtown Wichita. The SUV collided with another vehicle, killing 70-year-old Maria Wood and her 12-year-old granddaughter, Rosemary McElroy. Jenny Wood, a local musician and daughter and aunt to the victims, suffered a traumatic brain injury in the crash.