A disabled South Buffalo man who has Parkinson's disease and uses a wheelchair was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for wounding a man with a shotgun blast last August.
Pascual Cruz, 56, had faced a minimum prison term of five years and a maximum of 25 years for his convictions on charges of second-degree attempted murder and first-degree criminal use of a firearm.
"If there was ever a case that warranted the minimum, this is the one," defense lawyer Jeremy Schwartz told State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns. "This is a true tragedy in many ways."
Schwartz later expressed disappointment with the 15-year sentence.
"We think the sentence is high," he said. "We intend to appeal."
Schwartz and co-counsel Frank Bybel have said Cruz was trying to fend off a burglar who was breaking into his apartment when he fired the weapon.
"We felt it was self-defense," Bybel said of the shooting.
The defense lawyers contend that Cruz fired the weapon from inside his home - not outside.
A jury disagreed and convicted Cruz in July.
The early morning shooting happened outside Cruz's home on the 1800 block of South Park Avenue, prosecutors said.
Cruz went outside his apartment, next to a bar, about 2 a.m. Aug. 26, 2011, to complain to bar patrons about loud music.
When Dennis Reiber, 39, replied that he had no control over the music, Cruz went back inside his home to get the shotgun. Then Cruz came out and fired a blast, said Christopher J. Belling, a senior trial counsel in the Erie County District Attorney's Office.
The blast struck Reiber's left hand and stomach and inflicted "a near-fatal injury," said Belling, who prosecuted Cruz with Assistant District Attorney Vanessa S. Guite.
Reiber lost his left hand as a result of the wound.
Reiber, who attended the sentencing, did not speak before the judge when given a chance to make a victim impact statement.
"I don't believe the account of the victim," Schwartz said during the sentencing hearing.
In an unrelated case, Reiber pleaded guilty June 6 to third-degree burglary. For that crime, he was sentenced Monday to five years' probation and ordered to pay $250 restitution, according to the District Attorney's Office.
Reiber also served nearly two years in state prison in the mid-1990s for an attempted burglary conviction.
Cruz arrived in court in a wheelchair but has also used a walker because of a back injury he suffered as a machinist years ago, his lawyers said.
"I want to say I feel real bad about what happened that night," Cruz said when given the chance to speak at the sentencing.
Cruz, through an interpreter, called what happened "a very hard lesson."
"I always tried to be the best person I could in my neighborhood," he said. "I'm very sorry for what happened."

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