Plea deal accepted before trial in fatal shooting of bystander
By Matt Gryta
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 06/10/08 6:54 AM
Jordan McDowell will be sent back to state prison for up to the next 24 years for the fatal shooting of an innocent bystander.
McDowell, 18, of Mills Street, on Monday accepted a prosecution plea deal to a first-degree manslaughter charge as Erie County Judge Shirley Troutman was about to begin jury selection at his second-degree murder trial in the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Rakeem Samuel last August.
Troutman told McDowell he faces a 20-year prison term in addition to whatever prison time he still owes on an earlier robbery conviction.
McDowell, without going into any detail, admitted he fatally shot Samuel, of Lovering Avenue, in the stomach during an incident at about 10:30 p. m. last Aug. 22 at East Ferry Street and Donovan Drive.
Gary W. Hackbush, chief of the Erie County district attorney’s Felony Trial Section, said Samuel was “an innocent bystander” during a street confrontation between McDowell and several of the defendant’s friends and a friend of Samuel with whom McDowell had been fighting last summer. Samuel died of a shotgun blast to the stomach.
McDowell was remanded to custody pending his Aug. 6 sentencing.
He had been released from prison about two months before the shooting.
Hackbush said Troutman sentenced McDowell to prison two years ago for his part in the slashing and $24 robbery of an 84-year-old Grimes Street man on June 30, 2006.
Though the judge had imposed a prison term of up to three years, McDowell only spent a year behind bars and was released two months before Samuel was gunned down, the prosecutor said.
Hackbush said McDowell could be behind bars a total of almost 24 years, given the parole violation sentence he also faces. He has been jailed since his arrest about two hours after the August shooting.
