Two men from Suffolk County have been sentenced for their roles in a deadly mistaken identity shooting in Bohemia, according to News 12 New York. The sentences close a chapter on a killing that prosecutors say claimed the life of a man who had nothing to do with what the pair were looking for.
Christopher Fernandez was sentenced to 25 years to life after a jury found him guilty of murder. The conviction followed a trial in which the case against him was laid out before jurors, who returned the guilty verdict.
Oliver Shore was sentenced to 22 years to life for his role in the same shooting. Unlike Fernandez, Shore had pleaded guilty in the case rather than going to trial, but he too received a lengthy prison term.
According to prosecutors, the two men went to a home in Bohemia four years ago while looking for a stolen phone. The visit, however, was based on a mistake about who they were dealing with at that address.
In the course of that encounter, the pair shot and killed Michael Hartman, a man who prosecutors say had nothing to do with the stolen phone they had come looking for. His death turned a search over a missing device into a homicide.
The circumstances made the killing all the more wrenching. Hartman's two young daughters were inside the home at the time their father was shot and killed, prosecutors said, adding a painful dimension to a case that has now ended in two lengthy sentences.