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Overcast Fitzgerald gets 30 years for killing neighbor
Attorney to appeal Long Beach man’s sentence in 2010 shooting death
Having been found guilty of manslaughter in December, Long Beach resident Casey Fitzgerald was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 years in prison for the 2010 shooting death of his neighbor, 48-year-old Ernest Cummings Jr.
In December, after four days of deliberations, a Nassau County Court jury found Fitzgerald, 21, guilty of first-degree manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.
According to Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, on March 22, 2010, Fitzgerald and Cummings got into an argument in front of Fitzgerald’s East Hudson Street home. Afterward, both men returned to their homes, but Cummings came out of his house a few minutes later to find Fitzgerald waiting for him.
Fitzgerald fired three shots from a revolver, hitting Cummings once in the face, between his left eye and nose, Rice said, and Cummings was pronounced dead at South Nassau Communities Hospital shortly afterward.
“Mr. Fitzgerald could have stayed in his home after the argument and the conflict could have ended there,” Rice said in a statement Tuesday. “Instead, he grabbed his gun and chose to violently and irrevocably damage not only the victim’s family, but his own. It’s a choice that Mr. Fitzgerald will have the next 30 years locked in a prison cell to think about.”
In 2010, Detective Sgt. Richard Laursen of the Nassau County Police Department’s Homicide Squad told the Herald that Fitzgerald and Cummings, both owners of pit bulls, had a heated encounter. “It’s basically over treatment of the dogs,” Laursen said. “After the heated argument, our victim goes home and puts his dogs away and leaves his house. When he gets outside, Casey’s waiting for him.”
Fitzgerald subsequently fled to Virginia, but federal marshals tracked him down in Chesterfield County, and he was extradited back to Nassau County.
On Tuesday morning, the atmosphere in the courtroom was tense as family members and friends of both Fitzgerald and Cummings awaited the sentencing. Before Judge John Kase announced his decision, several members of Cummings’s family made prepared statements, all calling for Fitzgerald to receive the maximum sentence.
