'Intolerable' — Downtown shooting nets gunman 8-year prison term

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Decrying the scourge of gunplay in Canadian cities, a Windsor judge on Monday followed the Crown’s recommendation in handing down an eight-year prison sentence to a young triggerman while delivering a stern message that illegal firearms don’t belong in downtown Windsor.

Packing a loaded firearm into a crowded nightclub presents a danger to the community, said Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance. But discharging that gun in a downtown alley takes the danger level to “intolerable extremes.”

Nicholas McCullough, 25, conceded on the 12th day of his attempted murder trial last month that he was the man who pulled the trigger on Sept. 28, 2015, and he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated assault.

To put it bluntly, guns kill people

The guilty plea, McCullough’s youth and his troubled upbringing by two parents who themselves were “immersed in a criminal lifestyle” were all considered mitigating factors by the judge.

“He had to fend for himself and defend himself,” said Pomerance. But, she added, “a difficult childhood does not give licence to criminal activity.”

And when it comes to guns being carried, pointed and discharged in a city’s downtown, she said denunciation and deterrence had to be emphasized by the courts in any sentencing.

“To put it bluntly, guns kill people,” said Pomerance.

The defence had argued for a five-year prison term — the minimum sentence by law based on McCullough’s convictions — and the Crown was seeking an eight-year term.

Pomerance sided with the prosecution but gave McCullough 513 days enhanced credit for the 341 days he had already served in pre-sentence custody. The judge said the six and a half years remaining in his sentence gives him time to take advantage of rehabilitation in order to “break the cycle of violence.”

Noting that McCullough has had an “almost continuous” string of criminal convictions dating back to his youth, she warned him that, “if you continue on this path, you are on your way to spending the rest of your life in prison.”

The victim, Phillip Nkrumah, was shot three times at close range in an alley behind the Level 3 Vodka Emporium, where both men, strangers to each other, had been earlier in the evening. Assistant Crown attorney Renee Puskas told reporters outside court that it appeared the gunman was aiming for the victim’s groin area, but two of the bullets hit him in one thigh and a third lodged itself in a rear buttock.

The judge described Nkrumah as “less than cooperative” in the police investigation and when he took the witness stand at trial. During questioning by the Crown, he testified he didn’t even know how many times he’d been shot.

Critical to the prosecution’s case, therefore, was circumstantial evidence culled from hours of videotape retrieved from multiple indoor and outdoor private and public surveillance cameras, including 12 inside Level 3. The key piece of footage, however, a private condo tower camera depicting the actual alley confrontation and shooting, was grainy and cloaked in shadow.

Building manager Francis Fortin inspects the alley beside the Royal Windsor Terrace condo apartment building following an early-morning shooting on Sept. 28, 2015. Fortin released video to Windsor police hoping to apprehend the gunman. NICK BRANCACCIO / Windsor Star

The locations of the bullet wounds refute the argument that it was McCullough’s intention to kill Nkrumah, said Pomerance, but she described it as “fortuitous” that the victim’s injuries were not more serious. And she described as “a stroke of good luck” that one of the first to respond to the injured man was a partner in the Level 3 nightclub, Dan Patterson, who had special medical training for gunshot wounds through his time spent with the U.S. Marine Corps.

As part of his sentence, McCullough was ordered to provide a blood sample for a police DNA databank used to help solve crimes. He is also prohibited for life from owning any weapons.

Earlier this month, Nkrumah, now 33, pleaded guilty in Superior Court for his role in an unrelated gun trafficking case. He’s expected to be sentenced in April.


McCullough, originally charged with 22 counts, pleaded guilty to six charges, including aggravated assault and others related to firearms and probation breaches. The sentences for the other five counts are all to be served concurrently. The Crown on Monday dropped the other charges.

At a sentencing hearing in February, defence lawyer Frank Miller described his client’s sad and “peculiar background” filled with crime, and with both parents being familiar with penitentiary life. At 13, he was put into the care of the Children’s Aid Society but “effectively raised himself on the street.”

The captured surveillance videotape in the McCullough case came in large part from cameras installed in downtown Windsor in response to a spate of gun violence. Windsor police credit the cameras as a valuable new tool in fighting crime in the core.



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