Sacramento County jury convicts man in shootings that killed one and injured another
A Sacramento County jury has convicted a defendant for the shooting death of a man killed as he slept in a tent and shooting another man in a dispute over a bike in separate acts of gun violence last year in Rancho Cordova, prosecutors said.
The jury found Akeim McFadden guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting of George Nixon, according to a news release from the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office. The murder charge includes an enhancement for using a gun.
McFadden also was found guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter and two counts of being a felon in possession of a gun in the shooting of a 36-year-old man who survived his injuries, prosecutors said. The manslaughter also included an enhancement for using a gun.
The jurors convicted McFadden at the end of his trial Oct. 29, according to court records. Prosecutors said McFadden, 31, faces a maximum sentence of 98 years and 8 months to life in prison. McFadden was convicted in 2016 of spousal battery and personally inflicting great bodily injury, which is considered a strike under the state’s Three Strikes Law.
On Nov. 19, McFadden shot Nixon who was asleep in a tent in a Rancho Cordova home’s backyard, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Sacramento County sheriff’s officials said Nixon, 47, was found injured that morning at the home in the 2100 block of Starrlyn Way, just south of the American River. Nixon had a lower-body gunshot wound and was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Detectives determined McFadden and Nixon had an argument the night before the shooting, and the investigators believed McFadden shot Nixon at the Starrlyn home where Nixon had been sleeping in a tent with his girlfriend, the Sheriff’s Office announced in late February after McFadden’s arrest on the murder charge.
At that time, McFadden had been held at the Sacramento County Jail since Nov. 20 on a parole hold in connection with the June 24, 2019, shooting on Aries Way in Rancho Cordova.
In the June incident, McFadden shot the victim in the stomach at point-blank range in a dispute over a bicycle, prosecutors said. Medics took the injured man to U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where he was treated.
Prosecutors said the District Attorney’s Office Crime Lab matched shell casings found at the Starrlyn Way crime scene to shell casings found at the Aries Way crime scene.
McFadden on Friday remained in custody at the jail. He is scheduled to return to Sacramento Superior Court for sentencing Dec. 11 before Judge Ernest Sawtelle.
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 1:36 PM.
