A man who shot a gun in the Old Port three years ago was sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday but will be released within days because he has already been held longer than that while awaiting trial and sentencing.
Noor Mohamed, 28, faced up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon. But Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Nancy Mills said Mohamed’s age and an upbringing that included time in Somalia and Uganda before coming to the United States offset a criminal record and the danger he created when he fired three shots in the Old Port following an altercation with two men outside a bar.
Mohamed’s lawyer, Tina Nadeau, said she expects her client to be released within days. He finished serving a sentence in summer 2018 on federal charges related to the shooting and was transferred to custody in Maine while charges here worked their way through the state courts.
Mohamed and two men got into a fight outside an Old Port bar on Nov. 10, 2016. The other two men walked off, but Mohamed got into a friend’s car and drove after them, firing three shots. No one was injured, although a bullet grazed the clothing of one of the men.
Police chased Mohamed and arrested him nearby after he drove over a curb, disabling the vehicle.
The federal judge who sentenced him in 2018 for being a felon in possession of a firearm told Mohamed that he had had opportunities to turn his life around but, instead, appeared to be “doing a life sentence on the installment plan.”
“You’re pretty much out of straws,” federal District Court Judge Nancy Torreson told him in April 2018.
Mills echoed that sentiment, telling Mohamed that if he wound up in court again, a judge will read the transcript of his sentencing hearing and recognize that he had already been given a second chance. Mohamed’s record includes drug charges in Massachusetts that were dismissed after officials discovered a crime lab assistant had tampered with evidence and forged results. Mohamed’s charges were among more than 21,000 dismissed as a result of the scandal.
He also served time in Maine on drug and gun charges in York County in 2014.
But Mills said Mohamed had taken responsibility for his actions and had family support on his side. She also said that he likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from the time spent as a child in Somalia and Uganda before the family could join Mohamed’s father in the U.S. She urged Mohamed to take advantage of substance abuse and mental health counseling offered as part of his supervised release on the federal charges.
Mohamed told Mills that he is not a dangerous person and took responsibility for his acts. Two family members also spoke at the sentencing and said Mohamed was needed at home as the oldest son in the family. His father died several years ago.
Mohamed pleaded guilty to two reckless conduct charges, but there was no agreement on his sentence. Cumberland County District Attorney Jonathan Sahrbeck asked Mills to sentence Mohamed to five years in prison, the maximum, on one count and five years suspended sentence on the second, with two years of probation. Nadeau had asked for the minimum one-year sentence.
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