A Pittsburgh man who spent three years locked up awaiting trial walked out of the Allegheny County Jail this week after a jury acquitted him of homicide in the 2023 shooting death of a 15-year-old during a gun deal, convicting him only of firearms charges instead. Diontae Carter, now 20, was found not guilty of killing Mohamed Hussein on September 19, 2023, on Excelsior Street in Allentown, but jurors convicted him of possession of a firearm by a minor and carrying a firearm without a license.
The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for just one hour, according to TribLIVE. Allegheny County Judge Edward J. Borkowski ordered Carter to serve 11½ to 23 months with immediate release, followed by five years of probation, telling the court that additional jail time was not necessary. Carter, who is from Pittsburgh, had already spent roughly three years incarcerated pending trial, during which he earned a high school diploma.
A Gun Deal That Turned Deadly
Prosecutors said Hussein and Carter had arranged to meet to make a gun deal that evolved into Carter buying a Glock 48 handgun from Hussein. Police said Carter shot and killed Hussein, who was struck twice, once in the chest and once in the left leg. Carter claimed Hussein attacked him and threatened to shoot him, and he testified that Hussein told him he had already used the gun to shoot two people.
Defense attorney Wendy Williams argued Carter acted in self-defense, building her case around Hussein's alleged connection to an earlier, unrelated double homicide. Williams said Hussein had been identified by police as a co-defendant in a separate double-homicide case tied to a gun deal just weeks before his own death, and she told the court the criminal complaint in that other case described the same factual scenario Carter had testified to on the stand.
The Braddock Connection
That earlier case centers on the August 27, 2023 shooting deaths of Woodland Hills High School seniors Rimel Williamson and Nazir Parker, both 17, who were found dead near Margaretta and Center streets in Braddock around 11 p.m. that night. Allegheny County police said Hussein and co-defendant Jerrell Rockymore shot and killed the two teens, and court records show Rockymore contacted Williamson at 10:50 p.m. that evening, shortly before the shooting. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, police confirmation of Hussein’s link to the Braddock shooting was reported Thursday, October 15, 2026; videos recovered from Rockymore’s phone showed Hussein and Rockymore handling handguns hours before the shooting.
Rockymore, who was 16 at the time of the Braddock shooting, was himself shot multiple times inside a residence during that incident before Allegheny County Police determined he had also been a shooter, according to WPXI. He was charged on September 19, 2023 with two counts of criminal homicide in the deaths of Williamson and Parker, along with conspiracy, firearms offenses and illegally selling a firearm. Now 19, Rockymore has a trial scheduled for March 1.
A Jailhouse Killing Deepens the Case
Rockymore's legal troubles have only grown since then. He is also charged in the May beating death of 44-year-old Tyrone Good inside the Allegheny County Jail. Good was fatally beaten inside Cell 116 of Pod 4D just 20 minutes after being transferred from solitary confinement into the general population unit, according to the same TribLIVE report detailing Carter's case. The jailhouse attack came after Good had been extradited from Atlanta and held without bail on homicide charges for the December 28, 2025 death of his girlfriend, Michelle Sturdivant, as Hoodline previously reported in April.
On October 8, an Allegheny County district judge held all eight incarcerated defendants, including Rockymore, for trial on homicide and conspiracy charges in Good's death, following a preliminary hearing that featured jail surveillance video showing planning for the attack but not the assault inside the cell — a case Hoodline covered in detail this month.
Defense Alleges Delayed Disclosure
Williams told the court she believed the District Attorney's Office had an obligation to provide the Braddock double-homicide information months earlier, and she noted that charges in that other case were filed on the very date of Hussein's death — a timing she said she did not believe was a coincidence. Assistant District Attorney Brittany Felder countered that she had previously discussed the issue with Williams and that Rockymore had already been placed on the witness list before Carter's trial began. Williams maintained that the District Attorney's Office is obligated to turn over inculpatory or exculpatory evidence regardless.
Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 573 imposes a mandatory and continuing obligation on prosecutors to disclose exculpatory and material evidence to defense counsel, with judicial remedies for noncompliance ranging from trial continuances to the exclusion of evidence, according to a legal analysis from Goldstein Mehta LLC.
Firearms Conviction Stood Despite Acquittal
Even with the homicide acquittal, Carter's firearms convictions carried real legal weight. Under Pennsylvania law, individuals under the age of 21 are statutorily barred from obtaining a license to carry a concealed firearm or transporting one in a vehicle, a restriction the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed in 2025, according to a legal summary from mystatecollegelawyer.com. That meant Carter, who was 17 at the time, was legally barred from carrying a concealed firearm regardless of any self-defense justification. Carrying a concealed firearm without a license is generally a third-degree felony punishable by up to seven years in prison under state law, though it can be reduced to a first-degree misdemeanor carrying up to five years if the defendant was otherwise eligible for a permit and had no prior disqualifying record, per an explainer from The Hoover Firm, LLC.
