'Sammie the Shooter' gets up to 85 years in gang shooting
A South Philly gang member who unleashed a barrage of 17 bullets with an AK-47 rifle at rival gang members on a street corner in 2007 was sentenced Wednesday to the maximum term of 42 1/2 to 85 years in state prison.
A South Philly gang member who unleashed a barrage of 17 bullets with an AK-47 rifle at rival gang members on a street corner in 2007 was sentenced Wednesday to the maximum term of 42 1/2 to 85 years in state prison.
"The firepower you used in that residential area of South Philadelphia . . . they use less in Afghanistan," Common Pleas Judge Anne Marie Coyle told defendant Sammie Campbell, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Mitrick said after the hearing.
Campbell, 27, nicknamed "Sammie the Shooter," was part of the 7th Street gang.
About 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 12, 2007, he and two fellow gang members rode up in a van to the corner of 5th and Moore Streets, in South Philadelphia, got out and started firing into a crowd of about 10 members of the rival 5th Street gang, Mitrick said.
Amazingly, just one person was hit. Anthony Reid, then 20, was shot four times - twice in his abdomen and twice in his lower back.
Mitrick said the two men with Campbell - Maurice Wilkinson and Marklem Vicks, one armed with a .45-caliber handgun and the other with a 9mm handgun - together fired more than 15 shots in addition to Campbell's 17.
She said it was not clear who hit Reid.
At the time, bystanders were also outside, including a woman who lived at a nearby elderly home, Mitrick said.
The shooting followed a summer of gunfire between the two gangs, Mitrick said.
At Campbell's second trial in December, a jury convicted him of attempted murder, conspiracy and possession of an instrument of crime.
He had been convicted of the same charges after a 2010 trial, but was granted a new trial after he presented an alibi witness.
The witness, who was a teenager in September 2007, and Campbell both testified in December that Campbell was with her that night watching The Godfather and then drove her to school the next day, Mitrick said.
Mitrick and Assistant District Attorney Kate Shulman undercut that alibi when they found out that school was closed the next day because of a Jewish holiday.
Vicks and Wilkinson both pleaded guilty in April 2010 to charges of aggravated assault, conspiracy and possession of an instrument of crime.
Wilkinson, now 28, was sentenced in June 2010 to five to 10 years in state prison and eight years of probation.
Vicks, now 27, was sentenced in September 2010 to 12 to 25 years in prison.
After surviving the 2007 shooting, Reid was murdered leaving his house in July 2011, Mitrick said. She said authorities believe his murder was related to the gang rivalry, but no one has been arrested.
Campbell's sentence will be served consecutive to a prior sentence, in which he received 12 1/2 to 25 years in prison for a June 2007 shooting of two other 5th Street gang members, one of whom died.
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