Shooter at Route 66 bar gets 7 1/2 years

Marquese Robbins, 32, gets 7 1/2 years prison for shooting a gun in the Route 66 Bar and Grill on Westwood Avenue. The highly publicized incident occurred Oct. 8, 2009.

Marquese Robbins, a shooter in the highly publicized gunfight at a Westwood Avenue bar, was sentenced Wednesday to 7 1/2 years in prison.

Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Gene Zmuda, who likened the Oct. 8, 2009, shooting into a crowd of patrons at Route 66 Bar and Grill to gunplay in the days of the Wild West, said the facts in the shooting were egregious.

"Your actions in many respects placed innocent bystanders at risk for serious injury or potential death," Judge Zmuda said.

A surveillance camera in the bar recorded the gunfight, and the ensuing release of the videotape was played by media outlets across the county.

Robbins, 32, entered no-contest pleas April 11 to two counts of felonious assault and a specification that a gun was used in the gunfight.

Authorities said 20 shots were fired in the incidents from patrons and others in the crowded bar. No one was injured. Toledo police identified Robbins as the key shooter shortly afterward.

Wednesday, he pleaded no contest to burglary for breaking into an occupied home on South Reynolds Road on June 5, 2010, when police were pursuing him to arrest him on a warrant in the bar shooting. In that incident, he locked himself inside the home with three people, including a child.

Defense attorney Marty Dow, in asking for a minimum sentence, told the judge that since the shooting his client has turned his life around, in part, because of the birth of his 11-month-old daughter.

"I am not condoning what he did," Mr. Dow said. "He is happy that nobody got shot or, God forbid, somebody got killed."

However, Judge Zmuda was not convinced that the defendant had changed his lifestyle and asked Robbins why he didn't turn himself in to police after he was indicted and instead tried to run and hide when they attempted to arrest him.

Robbins was facing up to 11 years on the shooting incident and 18 months on the burglary. The judge sentenced him to 4 years for the felonious assault charges, a mandatory 3 years on the gun specification, and 6 months for the burglary.