This article was originally published on GoErie.com by Madeleine O’Neill on April 3, 2018

A 34-year-old Erie man with a prior conviction for attempted homicide was sent back to state prison Tuesday for his involvement in an April gunfight that left one man injured.

The defendant, Markcail Williams, received seven and a half to 20 years in state prison from Erie County Judge John Garhart. The minimum sentence was in the low end of the standard range of state sentencing guidelines.

Garhart noted that Williams will likely have to serve additional prison time for committing the crime while he was on supervision in a 1999 case. Williams was convicted of attempted homicide in that case and received 12 to 31 years in state prison when he was 16 years old.

Williams said Tuesday that he had been out of prison for about four years at the time of the new offense. He received credit for nearly one year of time served in prison toward his new sentence.

Williams pleaded guilty in January to a first-degree felony count of aggravated assault and a third-degree felony count of discharge of a firearm into an occupied structure.

With the plea, Williams admitted to firing a gun multiple times during the April 30 shootout outside the Kwik Fill in the 1100 block of East Lake Road, striking another man and a nearby residence where children were at home, court documents show.

Other charges, including other counts of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and carrying a firearm without a license, were dropped as part of a plea agreement with the Erie County District Attorney’s Office, which agreed not to seek the mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison for a committing a second violent offense.

The man who was struck in the gunfight, 27-year-old Davon A. McLaurin, was also charged with firing shots and in November received nine and a half to 19 years in state prison for his involvement in the shooting and for a drug charge in a separate case.

Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Lightner said there was “really no dispute that (Williams) is the initiator here.”

Shawn E. Smith, 33, was also charged in the shooting and in a separate homicide case that occurred in another location on the same night. He entered a plea agreement in both cases on Jan. 23 in exchange for a negotiated sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.