The victim of a shooting last year in the Woodlands housing park in the town refused to speak at his attacker’s sentencing because he’s afraid of retaliation.
So explained Niagara County District Attorney Brian Seaman before Thomas L. McDowell, 20, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Tuesday.
McDowell pleaded guilty to first-degree assault this past January.
McDowell’s 38-year-old victim, a man whose name was not disclosed in court, was shot twice in the torso on Feb. 5, 2023, in a house where McDowell was collecting a $40 drug debt, according to Seaman.
After the drug deal went sour, Seaman said McDowell hit the victim in the head with his gun, then shot him twice. It was “lucky,” Seaman said, that the shot wasn’t an inch closer to the victim’s spine or else there would be a murder charge being decided by the court.
Finally, he said that McDowell’s victim also has been intimidated not to speak at the sentencing by unidentified callers and that was the reason he would not be speaking in court.
Seaman said that McDowell was a danger to the community and should face the maximum punishment possible for the crime — 25 years in prison, with five years of supervision following his release. Seaman brought up McDowell’s “extensive history” of violence to justify the sentence, including an incident where McDowell stabbed someone in the neck.
Robert Fogg, McDowell’s attorney, asserted that McDowell was taking responsibility for the charge pleaded to.
He also said that McDowell had a history with the courts, but he wouldn’t call it “extensive” and he had seen no records of a stabbing.
Niagara County Court Judge Caroline Wojtaszek said despite McDowell’s young age, she had seen no remorse from him and that he had remained non-compliant in the probation program for which he’d served for former arrests, all of which was part of her decision to level the sentence at 18 years for the crime.
McDowell was arrested in February 2023 after being found at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center where he was treated for a stab wound sustained after the shooting.