Sentence handed down for Fresno man who killed rival, seriously injured woman
The gunman in a 2023 gang-related murder was sentenced Tuesday to life without parole, according to the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office.
Malik Nichols, 30, of Fresno was convicted by a Fresno County jury March 18 for first-degree murder in the June 2023 fatal shooting of Ibrahim Muhammad in southwest Fresno. Nichols’s attorney could not be immediately reached for comment.
A woman not involved in the gang conflict was also seriously injured by gunfire in the incident, which took place in a neighborhood northwest of Church and Elm avenues.
Nichols fired into a group of people, striking Muhammad three times and hitting the 57-year-old woman in the head, police said. She survived but lives with life-altering injuries, prosecutors said.
Police used comments made by Nichols on social media to determine he was involved in the premeditated slaying, according to the DA’s Office.
Fresno police said in August 2023 they determined Nichols was responsible for the fatal shooting two months earlier, but by then he was in custody for an unrelated incident. He had opened fire “in broad daylight” at another victim three days before the murder, according to prosecutors.
Nichols was arrested in July 2023 in Seattle, where he fled after the murder, according to the DA’s Office. He was on parole and being monitored with an ankle device for a prior strike on his record for assault with a firearm, prosecutors said.
