A 23-year-old Getzville man will spend the next two decades behind bars for gunning down a 19-year-old on Buffalo's East Side in the summer of 2024. Jahi Pope was sentenced Monday to 20 years in state prison followed by five years of post-release supervision for the fatal shooting of Naszair E. Sanders.
State Supreme Court Justice Betty Calvo-Torres handed down the determinate sentence after Pope pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of first-degree manslaughter, a Class B violent felony, according to the Erie County District Attorney's Office. The guilty plea, entered in July 2026, resolved the homicide charges against Pope without a trial and required proof that he intended to cause serious physical injury that resulted in Sanders' death. As News 4 Buffalo first reported, the sentencing closed out a case that stretched back more than two years.
The shooting happened at approximately 5:42 p.m. on Monday, July 29, 2024, on the 1400 block of Broadway near Liddell Street in the city's Genesee-Moselle neighborhood, an East Side community along the Broadway corridor. Responding Buffalo Police officers found Sanders suffering from gunshot wounds at the scene, where he was pronounced dead.
A Cross-Jurisdictional Investigation
Solving the case required cooperation that crossed city and suburban lines. The investigation brought together the Buffalo Police Department, the Amherst Police Department, and the Erie County Crime Analysis Center, reflecting the fact that Getzville, where Pope lived, is a hamlet within the suburban town of Amherst just outside Buffalo, per the same district attorney's account.
Assistant District Attorney Justin H. Caldwell of the Homicide Bureau and Assistant District Attorney Abbi L. Fuhrken of the Domestic Violence Bureau prosecuted the case under Erie County District Attorney Michael J. Keane. Under New York Penal Law, a first-degree manslaughter conviction carries a maximum statutory sentence of up to 25 years in state prison for violent B-felony offenses, with judges holding discretion within a five-to-25-year range for non-predicated violent offenders, the DA's office noted. Pope's 20-year term falls near the top of that range.
Broadway's Recent History of Gun Violence
Pope's case is one of several violent incidents to emerge from the Broadway corridor in recent years. In June 2026, Buffalo Police arrested a suspect following a separate daytime shooting on Broadway near Strauss Street, about a mile west of the Genesee-Moselle crime scene, that left one victim with serious leg injuries, according to WGRZ.
In February 2026, an Erie County jury convicted a 31-year-old man of second-degree murder for an April 2024 fatal shooting in the nearby Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood, a case also prosecuted by ADA Caldwell, per the Erie County District Attorney's Office. And in March 2023, an Erie County judge sentenced a gunman to 30 years to life in prison for a June 2022 fatal shooting at Broadway and Sears Street near the Broadway Market, a case that culminated in a shootout with pursuing police officers.
Together, the cases underscore a pattern of gun violence enforcement and court resolutions along the Broadway corridor stretching back several years. For the family of Naszair Sanders, Pope's sentencing marks the legal conclusion of a case rooted in a single violent evening in 2024 that claimed a 19-year-old's life.
