A Baldwin man was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for firing into a crowd at a Hempstead house party and killing 19-year-old college athlete Amira McCleod with a stray bullet.
Jacob McMillan, 18, was sentenced after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly announced.
McMillan pleaded guilty June 4 before Judge Helene Gugerty. His sentence was announced Aug. 11.
The shooting happened at about 10:50 p.m. Nov. 22, 2025, at a house party on Willow Avenue in Hempstead.
According to prosecutors, McMillan approached the home and an individual throwing the party attempted to pat him down before allowing him inside.
McMillan refused to be searched, pulled away and took out a gun, prosecutors said. He fired twice at the person who had tried to search him.
That victim was struck in the arm while diving behind a car for cover.
McMillan then fled south on Kennedy Avenue before turning and firing another shot, according to the district attorney’s office.
The bullet passed through the shoulder of another victim and struck McCleod, a Monroe University student from St. Albans, Queens, who was attending the party with friends.
McCleod was struck in the head and pronounced dead at the scene.
The two other people who were shot were taken to local hospitals and treated for their injuries.
“Amira McCleod was a gifted student athlete whose future was stolen in an instant by this defendant’s reckless disregard for human life,” Donnelly said.
Prosecutors said McMillan hid in a backyard about one block south of the party before being picked up by a ride-sharing vehicle at approximately 11 p.m. The vehicle dropped him off on Coolidge Avenue in Baldwin at a property bordering his home on Wales Avenue.
Investigators reviewed extensive surveillance footage as they worked to identify McMillan.
According to prosecutors, video showed him wearing the same dark blue and black North Face winter jacket, light-colored jeans and black sneakers seen at the party.
Surveillance also captured McMillan exiting a Long Island Rail Road train at the Baldwin station earlier that evening, getting onto a Nassau Inter-County Express bus and later exiting near Baldwin Road and Homan Boulevard, about a block south of the Willow Avenue home shortly before the shooting.
A doorbell camera across the street from the party also captured McMillan, prosecutors said.
McMillan was arrested in Baldwin on Dec. 2, 2025, by the Nassau County Police Department’s Bureau of Special Operations and Homicide Squad.
He will serve 20 years to life in state prison.
