Investigators search the pond at Deering Oaks for evidence on Sept. 8, 2022, a day after a fatal shooting. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

The man accused of a deadly 2022 shooting in Portland’s Deering Oaks park agreed to serve 10 years in state prison for manslaughter.

Amin Awies Mohamed, 40, entered an Alford plea to the manslaughter charge last week for the death of Walter Omal, 31, on Sept. 7, 2022.

An Alford plea means a defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges there is enough evidence to find them guilty.

Mohamed, who is from the Boston-area, was scheduled to go to trial in Cumberland County Superior Court on Monday for a murder charge in Omal’s death, but two days after the jury was selected, he entered the new plea and was immediately sentenced to 20 years, with all but 10 suspended and four years of probation.

As of Friday, he was being held at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham and his earliest release date was listed as Aug. 28, 2030.

The state’s case against Mohamed relied on several differing accounts of the chaotic shooting, according to court documents. Police spent two days interviewing witnesses who seemed intoxicated, changed their stories and used varying nicknames in describing the shooter and other people in the park.

In the days after the shooting, investigators also waded through and drained the pond looking for the gun. More than 100 people gathered for a vigil near the benches where Omal died.

In a victim impact statement shared by the Office of the Maine Attorney General, Omal’s family described him as a hardworking, smart man who lived a full life. He was kind, joyful and close to his friends and family, especially his nieces and nephews who looked up to him.

“Not long before he died, we saw Walter in Portland, and asked him when he was going to get married. He said that he would one day, and that he would have beautiful children like his nieces and nephews,” the statement read. “He wanted a future, and with one careless action, that was all taken from him.”

Omal’s family said that Mohamed’s sentence does not reflect what he deserves.

“Walter was ripped from our lives so abruptly, but the last two years as we have navigated this criminal justice process has felt like eternity,” the statement read. “Though no length of sentence will bring Walter back, you should be looking at this sentence as a gift.”

During a pretrial hearing on Oct. 17, a prosecutor said the witnesses who helped identify Mohamed as the shooter were unreliable to testify in court. The defense attorneys also pointed to two alternative suspects they hoped to use in their defense if the case went to trial. 

One of Mohamed’s attorneys, Peter Richard, said that his client accepted the state’s offer to drop the murder charge in exchange for the Alford plea because he didn’t want to run the risk of being convicted at trial.

“We did a lot of digging in the case to identify gaps that we believe had the chance of raising reasonable doubt for the jurors,” Richard said in a phone interview Friday afternoon. “We believe that is reflected in the offer that the state proposed because it’s not often that (a murder charge) is reduced to manslaughter.”

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to answer questions about the plea deal.