HOLLIDAYSBURG — A Blair County jury took about 90 minutes Thursday to convict an Altoona man of attempted homicide, aggravated assault and related offenses in a Dec. 11, 2022, early morning shooting outside a city bar.

Sheriff deputies handcuffed and escorted Mark A. Phillips Jr., 39, to the county prison shortly after the jury returned to court with 16 guilty verdicts, ending a three-day trial where Phillips admitted to slamming his .45 caliber ACP Smith & Wesson M&P Shield pistol against a windshield. But he couldn’t explain why it discharged a bullet into a vehicle with five people in an alley beside the Kettle Inn bar.

District Attorney Pete Weeks, who asked the jury to reject Phillips’ claim, referenced testimony from expert witnesses, who said this gun was incapable of firing without the trigger being squeezed.

“He shot a bullet through that windshield,” Weeks said in closing his case before a jury that saw photos of the vehicle’s windshield shattered by a bullet hole and an exit hole with strands of the female driver’s hair.

Weeks argued that Phillips mistakenly thought that Mykal Cowher — a man who delivered one punch to Phillips’ mouth and knocked him to the ground in the Kettle Inn’s parking lot — was the vehicle’s driver.

Cowher, who was in the parking lot with some other bar patrons, admitted to hitting Phillips during an argument, then getting into a vehicle that arrived to give his friends a ride home.

Weeks relied on surveillance video to point out that after Phillips got up from the ground and paced in a circle, he then hurried to his nearby parked truck and retrieved the gun.

“His motive is revenge,” Weeks said.

Phillips told the jury he was scared of being attacked by Cowher and his friends and wanted the gun for protection. But Weeks and fellow prosecutor First Assistant District Attorney Nichole Smith disagreed.

When cross-examining the testifying Phillips, Smith suggested that instead of going to get his gun, the scared Phillips could have just walked away.

“If only you had had a truck that you could have used to drive away?” Smith said facetiously in her cross-examination, then added: “Oh wait, you did.”

Phillips, in response, testified that he thought Cowher and his friends would be looking for him.

Defense attorney Kristen Anastasi asked the jurors to accept that Phillips had no intention of killing anyone when he “smacked the butt of the gun off the windshield.” She described Phillips as scared, frantic and alone in an alley where, after being struck so hard that he fell to the ground, he thought there were five people ready to come after him.

“This whole case comes down to what was in Mark’s mind … and Mark believed that he was under attack,” Anastasi said.

Weeks asked the jury to reject that claim by relying on the surveillance video.

He pointed to Phillips’ lack of reaction to the gun’s discharge, then to Phillips reaching through the vehicle’s windows to attack front and rear passengers — including the man he struck three times with the handgun. As the driver pulled away, surveillance video showed Phillips attempting to fire toward the vehicle.

“All this simply because he got hit in the mouth and didn’t like it,” Weeks told the jurors.

Smith offered a similar conclusion after the verdicts were rendered.

“He brought a gun to a bar fight … because he has a temper and fragile ego,” she said.

President Judge Wade A. Kagarise revoked Phillips’ bail pending sentence for a to-be-determined date after Smith pointed out that Phillips convictions could result in a sentence of 20 to 40 years. Anastasi objected by pointing out that Phillips has been out of jail on bail for almost two years without any violations.

“I am disappointed that the jury saw the events differently than we did,” the defense attorney said.

Smith also praised the Altoona police officers for their work in this case.

After responding to the report of a shooting, she said officers were quick to secure surveillance video and use it to identify those involved.

She praised their follow-up interviews with Phillips, who provided shortened versions as to what happened and conflicting statements that left officers concluding that this was not an accidental shooting.

“This case was also about divine intervention,” Smith added. “It could have easily been a homicide.”

In addition to felony counts of attempted homicide and aggravated assault, the jury also convicted Phillips of misdemeanor counts of possessing an instrument of crime, simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.