Downtown BG shooter gets prison sentence

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The man found guilty of discharging a gun downtown and injuring another is going to prison.

Marquise Brown, 23, appeared for a sentencing hearing Tuesday in the courtroom of Wood County Common Pleas Judge Matt Reger.

A jury deliberated for three hours in December before finding Brown guilty of one count of felonious assault, a second-degree felony, and one count of assault, a first-degree misdemeanor.

Brown has appealed the 180 days he was sentenced to serve on the misdemeanor. He also plans to appeal the prison sentence.

Defense attorney Michael Kelley said his client had no juvenile record, participates in his children’s lives and was a preschool teacher.

“That says a lot about who Mr. Brown is,” Kelley said.

The charges filed against his in this incident are very out of character, he said.

During the trial, the prosecution showed a video of Brown reaching to his waist and pulling what appeared to be a gun before disappearing off screen.

The incident happened Oct. 2, 2021, in a parking lot, in the 200 block of North Main Street.

Four gunshots were heard coming from the direction from which Brown disappeared, and bystanders took off running.

A man was struck in the calf by two bullets. One bullet was a through and through, and the second bullet hit bone and broke his leg.

Brown was indicted in December 2021 for obstructing justice, a fifth-degree felony, for lying to police after the incident, and assault, a first-degree misdemeanor, for striking another person in the head, which also was caught on video.

Kelley asked Reger to consider the minimum allowable sentence.

Reger said the minimum was two years for the assault plus the mandatory three-year gun specification for a total of five years. Another year would be tacked on, due to the Reagan Tokes Act, making the minimum maximum prison term six years.

Wood County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Christopher Anderson said Brown has shown no remorse for shooting into a crowd and striking a bystander on a crowded weekend evening.

He and his four co-defendants were the first to run, which alerted police they may be involved in the shooting, Anderson said.

“There was no actual video of the actual shooting,” he said, and added scientific methods were used to determine who the shooter was.

“It’s clear that Mr. Brown caused all the activity that night,” he said.

Brown started a fight, then pulled out a gun, Anderson said, and four shots were heard on the video.

The Bureau of Criminal Investigation recovered four shell casings and entered them into a national database to try to determine the gun that was involved, Anderson said.

In February 2022, Brown’s brother reported his gun was stolen. It was recovered in March and testing showed the shell casings matched those recovered in Bowling Green.

Brown’s brother was in Bowling Green the night of the shooting, Anderson said.

A test of the five suspects showed three had gunshot residue on their hands and Brown had twice as much on both hands, he said.

Brown was indicted in June for felonious assault, with the gun specification, a second-degree felony, and obstructing justice, a third-degree felony.

“What reason do you have to fire a weapon into a crowd of people other than to cause someone’s death?” Anderson asked.

Brown apologized for his actions and the pain he caused the victim.

“I know what I did was a mistake … and I take responsibility,” he said.

Brown also apologized to his co-defendants for getting them involved.

“It was just a mistake,” he said.

As someone who has been shot twice, Brown said he thinks about it every day. He asked for leniency.

Reger said the jury determined without a reasonable doubt that Brown had fired a gun into a crowd.

He imposed a sentence of six years for the assault, to be served consecutively with the three years mandatory term from the firearms specification.

There is an assumption that he will be released after nine years, but that can be rebutted after a hearing by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Due to the felony falling under Reagan Tokes Act classification, he can be held an addition three years.

This sentence will be served concurrently to misdemeanor sentence of 180 days Reger imposed Dec. 1, which was the last day of the trial.

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