A Connecticut man was sentenced on Monday to 50 years in prison for fatally shooting another man outside a restaurant in 2017.
Shardel Ragin, 36, was handed the lengthy sentence for killing Max Antoine in Bridgeport more than seven years ago, the Connecticut Post reported.
“You are very courageous and I’m sorry you had to go through a horrible thing,” Ragin told Antoine’s family in court, according to the CT Post. However, he maintained he did not kill Antoine.
Ragin was convicted of the killing in May at a trial that lasted less than two weeks. He did not testify.
Antoine, who was 34 when he was killed, was walking out of a restaurant shortly after midnight on April 20, 2017, when he was shot dead. The case remained cold until 2021, when a witness came forward, the CT Post reported.
The witness told investigators he was sitting in a car with Ragin outside the restaurant, and Ragin was waiting for a man Antoine was with to exit the establishment. When Antoine and his acquaintance walked out, Ragin drove up and started shooting, according to the witness.
Ragin’s car and cellphone were also in the area at the time of the shooting, police said.
Cops said the other man, who avoided the bullets by ducking behind a car, was the target of the shooting, and Antoine was simply a bystander.
The witness told police he was afraid to come forward until he learned Ragin had been arrested in connection with another shooting, the 2018 killing of Willie Nance, also in Bridgeport. Ragin eventually pleaded guilty to a gun charge in that case.
Ragin’s defense team argued unsuccessfully at trial that the witness was lying about Ragin killing Antoine.
