Guilty plea in fatal shooting of Poughkeepsie man in Peekskill
A man pleaded guilty Friday in the Peekskill shooting death of a father of seven as the victim was dropping one of his kids off at the mother's home.
Reginald McClure, 39, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and weapon charges, agreeing to prosecutors' sentence offer of 30 years in state prison.
He admitted shooting 53-year-old Ernest Wilson on May 21, 2023, at Sherman Avenue and McKinley Street. McClure fired six shots as he chased Wilson, who was hit in the arm and the buttocks as the son he was dropping off and another relative watched. He died in the hospital three days later.
Wilson was a truck driver and Peekskill native who was living in Poughkeepsie. At the time of the shooting McClure was dating the mother of two of Wilson's children.
The 9mm handgun used to shoot Wilson was never recovered. But McClure had another 9mm and a .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol when he was arrested at a Yonkers hotel days after the shooting.
McClure was charged with second-degree murder. But he avoided a potential life sentence and was promised the maximum 25 years in prison for the manslaughter charge plus an additional five years for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to the guns he had when arrested.
McClure was indicted earlier this year on federal narcotics and firearm charges.
His lawyer in the Westchester case, Menachem White, asked for a lengthy adjournment of sentencing hoping that the federal case would be resolved before that. That would allow state Supreme Court Justice James McCarty to impose a concurrent sentence that would overlap with any federal prison term.
The judge scheduled sentencing for Sept. 19 but agreed to push that off into November if the federal charges are still pending at that time.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Peekskill NY man pleads guilty to manslaughter in fatal shooting
