LOCKPORT — It took a Niagara County Court jury just five hours, over two days of deliberation, to find Marchello M. Gildersleeve guilty of murder and weapons possession in the slaying of Daniella Patterson in December 2022.
The jury found Gildersleeve, 43, of the Falls, guilty on Friday afternoon, of single counts of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. He faces a prison term of 40 years to life behind bars when he is sentenced in August.
He remains held without bail at the Niagara County jail pending that sentencing hearing.
The jurors deliberated for about an hour on Wednesday before being sent home after asking for a read-back of some of the testimony in the case. After being off on Thursday, the jury listened to the testimony read back Friday morning and resumed deliberations.
They announced that they had reached a verdict about 90 minutes later. The jurors heard four days of testimony, followed by close to three hours of closing arguments from prosecutors and Gildersleeve’s defense on Wednesday morning.
Falls Police patrol officers responded to the emergency room of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center at around 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 10, 2022, for a report of a female victim being brought there with a gunshot wound. Patterson, 35, of the Falls, was taken to the medical center in a private car and after suffering a gunshot wound to her back.
She was pronounced dead at the medical center a short time after her arrival.
Officers were able to locate the murder scene in the 400 block of Ninth Street and Crime Scene Unit detectives recovered evidence both there and from the car that transported Patterson to the hospital.
Investigators said that the evidence showed Gildersleeve had been sitting in the back seat of that car, while Patterson was in the front passenger-side seat of the vehicle when the shooting occurred. Falls Police Criminal Investigation Division (CID) detectives said they were able to quickly identify Gildersleeve as their prime suspect in the murder.
However, detectives said Gildersleeve fled from the Falls and then became the subject of an intense manhunt in and around the Buffalo area.
He was taken into custody, days after the murder, when Cheektowaga Police found him on train tracks in a restricted area in their town.
“This defendant opened fire from close range killing a young woman while she sat defenseless in a car and he continued to fire at the victim as the car drove off,” Niagara County District Attorney Brian Seaman said after the jury verdict. “This killing was cold-blooded and deserves an extremely harsh sentence which we will ask the judge to impose at sentencing.”