Caught on video, suspect admits to shooting

On the 12th day of his attempted murder trial, and just as the prosecution and defence were set to give their closing arguments, the accused decided to come clean and plead guilty to shooting another man in a downtown alley. “You will acknowledge that you shot Mr. Nkrumah three times?” Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance asked Nicholas McCullough, 25.

“Yes,” came the response in a barely audible voice.

The shooting victim, who had surgery and survived, hadn’t been terribly helpful to the prosecution’s case.

On the witness stand, Phillip Nkrumah testified he couldn’t identify the man who shot him at close range, nor could he even say how many times he was shot that night.

“I got shot and I ran,” said Nkrumah, whose testimony in the McCullough case stretched over two days, one of them in which he was needed in another courtroom for a separate trial where he was the defendant in a gun trafficking case. But the main witness in the Crown’s case was videotape, with hours of incriminating digital footage culled by police investigators from nightclubs and the growing array of public and private surveillance cameras keeping a close watch on Windsor’s downtown. Assistant Crown attorney Renee Puskas conceded the quality of the night-time surveillance footage taken of the Sept. 28, 2015, incident wasn’t very good. But based on what the accused was wearing, “the manner of his walk and many other identifying features,” she said the video from numerous cameras showed the paths taken by the victim and the accused — strangers to each other — in the street, inside Level 3 Vodka Emporium, with its 12 operating cameras, and then in an adjacent alley off Park Street. McCullough told the court that he’s the figure shown pulling a restricted Raven Arms .25-calibre handgun and shooting Nkrumah, who was facing him in close proximity.

Puskas said Nkrumah was shot twice in one leg and once in the left buttock, two of the shots fired after Nkrumah was turned and bolting away. Video showed the victim running up the stairs back to Level 3 and then collapsing onto the floor a short time after sitting down at a table. Club partner Dan Patterson used his U.S. Marine Corps first aid skills to patch up his wounds until paramedics arrived.

It wasn’t until two-and-a-half

years later that workmen found the discarded handgun on a nearby roof in the 400 block of Pelissier Street.

While dodging the attempted murder count, pleading guilty to shooting a firearm at a person comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. The judge will announce her sentence on Friday, with defence lawyer Frank Miller seeking a five-year term and the prosecution calling for an eight-year prison sentence. Miller described a client with a sad and “peculiar background” that includes a “youth and young adulthood full of crime.” When McCullough was born, his father was in the penitentiary serving one of a number of lengthy prison terms for his own criminal activity. His mother, who also served “a certain number of terms in penitentiary herself,” was out of the picture, the boy raised largely by his father in a “less than satisfactory” manner.

At 13, he was put into the care of the Children’s Aid Society, but foster homes were not to his liking and he “effectively raised himself on the street,” said Miller. McCullough has been criminally convicted and jailed a number of times, including for assault causing bodily harm and robbery with violence. Miller said his client might only have a Grade 8 education and no employment history but that “he is a young man, capable of learning.” The coming stint in prison, he added, could help with rehabilitation and, with proper direction, set him on a new course in life.

While “no one can ever say we can’t ever be hopeful,” Puskas said McCullough’s life of criminality is “well-entrenched,” with a continuous record since he was a youth. She said discharging a firearm in a public area in the downtown posed a “great danger” to the public and that denunciation and deterrence should be paramount in sentencing.

Originally charged with 22 counts, McCullough on Wednesday pleaded guilty to six counts, including aggravated assault and possession of a prohibited firearm.