Hempstead, NY - December 18th, 2013 - Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced today that a Hempstead man received the maximum 25-years-to-life prison sentence today for shooting another man to death in December 2012.
A jury deliberated for less than an hour in October before convicting Diquan McClough, 21, of Murder in the Second Degree and Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree. He was sentenced today by Judge Angelo A. Delligatti.
“This strong sentence follows a multi-agency, multi-state effort to bring a very dangerous criminal to justice swiftly,” DA Rice said. “It won’t bring his young victim back, but the streets will be safer with Mr. McClough in prison for the next two decades.”
DA Rice said that at approximately 4:20 p.m. on December 8, 2012, McClough approached 20-year-old Quavis Ford in front of Ford’s apartment house on Terrace Avenue in Hempstead. McClough fired six rounds from a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun at Ford, hitting him three times. Ford was shot twice in the back and once in the left leg. He was pronounced dead at approximately 1 a.m. the following day.
McClough shot Ford because he thought Ford had been involved in a previous shooting of McClough’s friend. McClough then fled the scene. He was arrested on January 10, 2013 in Augusta, Ga. by Nassau County Police Department detectives with the assistance of the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Marshals Service.
After the eight-day trial, a jury rejected the defense’s claims that there was insufficient evidence to prove that McClough had shot the victim.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Walsh of DA Rice’s Major Offense Bureau is prosecuting the case. McClough was represented by Glen Hardy, Esq.
