A Beaver County man convicted of trying to kill a Monroeville police officer is headed to prison for up to 70 years.
Jamal Brooks wounded Monroeville Sgt. James J. MacDonald in the Jan. 3, 2024, shooting.
Brooks, 34, of Aliquippa was sentenced Monday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court to 20 to 40 years in prison, followed by a 15- to 30-year sentence for attempted homicide.
He also got concurrent terms for aggravated assault and firearms charges.
Brooks faced a mandatory 20 to 40 years in prison for assaulting MacDonald.
Investigators said Brooks fired at least 16 shots at MacDonald and his police SUV after an armed robbery at Crumbl, a cookie store in Miracle Mile Shopping Plaza. Police were dispatched to the mall at 9:13 p.m.
MacDonald, who was in the police station that night, spotted Brooks while driving down Monroeville Boulevard.
Almost immediately upon stopping his police SUV, MacDonald testified in October, he fell under attack.
After a first volley of six shots, MacDonald put his SUV in reverse to try to get away. But as he backed up, the shooter moved to higher ground, firing 10 more times.
Three shots went through MacDonald’s windshield. Two of them hit him, shattering his left elbow and traveling through his left buttock into the right side of his body.
A jury deliberated for less than three hours last fall before finding Brooks guilty on four charges.
Brooks, who appeared in court Monday in a fluorescent yellow Allegheny County Jail jumpsuit and with a thick beard, refused to listen to MacDonald’s victim-impact statements before Judge Elliot Howsie handed down his decision.
“I would prefer to be excused (and) I’m asking nicely,” Brooks told Howsie as MacDonald walked to a microphone just feet in front of the man who shot him.
“I’m sympathetic to (MacDonald) as a human being, as an individual,” Brooks added. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“But you did it,” Howsie later told him. “And now you’re not man enough to sit here and listen to what he has to say about his experience.”
As Brooks left the courtroom, he raised his middle finger as he stared at several Monroeville police officers in the courtroom, some in uniform.
Family impact
In victim impact statements read aloud by MacDonald, the sergeant’s family expressed how the shooting affected them.
“I feel scared (and) no kid should have to live with that,” his 14-year-old daughter, Abigail, wrote. “What was done to my Dad didn’t just put him in danger. It changed our lives.”
“The chaos of that night put fear in our home,” wrote MacDonald’s wife, Amy. “There is no forgiving it. There is no erasing it … the impact of this crime is permanent.”
MacDonald’s son, Connor, also 14, recalled how seeing Monroeville police Chief Kenneth D. “Doug” Cole arrive at the front door to tell the family about the shooting “didn’t seem real.”
“I just stood there, scared and shocked and angry,” Connor said in his statement. “What happened to my Dad changed the way I see the world.”
Before reading Brooks’ sentence, Howsie referred to the defendant as “a violent person” whose life has revolved around “a history of violence.”
Brooks was no longer in the courtroom to hear the judge.
“This is a very cold, calculated offense,” Howsie said. “I think his goal was to take Sgt. MacDonald’s life.”
Excessive or appropriate?
Attorney Ben Jackson, who represented Brooks at the hearing, pushed back on a prosecutor’s calls for two 20- to 40-year terms, served back to back.
“Forty to 80 years is excessive,” Jackson told Howsie. “I understand the commonwealth’s argument … but people who are convicted of murder rarely get that long.”
Brooks came into Monday’s hearing with a criminal history, Howsie said and records show.
He was convicted twice on gun charges. In two other cases — a robbery and a drug charge — prosecutors opted to not pursue charges.
In 2015, Brooks negotiated a plea with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to retail theft and a firearms charge, court records show. A judge gave him one year of probation.
Brooks, who represented himself last year, told jurors that his October trial was driven by “deception.” On Monday, he called the legal process that put him behind bars “a charade.”
But prosecutors gave jurors a different perspective.
“Every single piece of evidence in this case points to one person,” Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Ilan Zur argued during the trial. “It’s as simple as that — because he did it.”
MacDonald declined comment after the hearing.
“We’re satisfied,” Zur added, outside the courtroom. “I think the judge considered (Brooks’) criminal history and fashioned an appropriate sentence.”