Sajdah Abdur-Rabb’s family mourned her for nearly two years as the case against Reginald Brooks moved from arrest to sentencing.
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Long before a jury convicted Reginald Brooks and a judge sentenced him to 85 years in prison, Sajdah Abdur-Rabb’s children were trying to describe what had disappeared from their family when she was killed.
They remembered a mother of nine, a grandmother of 10 and a woman one son called the family’s protector. Those memories surfaced in February 2025, days after Abdur-Rabb was fatally shot at a mobile home park on Fort Wayne’s south side. The criminal case then stretched for more than a year and a half. Brooks was convicted of murder and a firearm enhancement after a four-day trial in September 2026, and Allen Superior Court Judge Fran Gull imposed the maximum reported sentence of 85 years on Oct. 30. The court also ordered $7,150 in restitution.
The sentence supplies a legal ending to the principal trial-court proceedings, but the family’s earliest public comments showed why a prison term could not restore what was lost. One of Abdur-Rabb’s sons told 21Alive that she had been his best friend and the family’s guardian. He described relatives as broken by the killing. A fundraiser established after her death said the family was in shock and used the words “Domestic violence has shattered our world” to summarize what the shooting had done to them.
Abdur-Rabb was 50 years old. Her relatives said her youngest child was 11. The size of the family made the effect of the killing unusually visible in early coverage: nine children had lost their mother, and 10 grandchildren had lost their grandmother. Those facts appeared while Brooks was still only accused, before prosecutors had presented a case to a jury and before any judge had determined his punishment.
The investigation began Jan. 30, 2025, after police were called to a mobile home park off Dunkelberg Road near Airport Expressway and Bluffton Road. Officers found Abdur-Rabb suffering from a gunshot wound. She was taken to an area hospital and pronounced dead. Brooks, then 53, was detained at the scene and booked into the Allen County Jail on a preliminary murder allegation. The Allen County Coroner’s Office later ruled Abdur-Rabb’s death a homicide.
What detectives learned inside the family home complicated any suggestion that the shooting was simply an unexplained firearm discharge. Abdur-Rabb’s teenage son told investigators that Brooks had been drinking and had threatened to kill both him and his mother before the shooting, according to court documents reported by 21Alive. He described an argument in which Brooks had a gun and Abdur-Rabb knocked it away. The weapon changed hands as the confrontation continued.
Another witness told police that the son called because he felt threatened. She said she could hear Brooks making a threat against their mother in the background and then heard a gunshot. That account gave investigators evidence that the threats were not merely something recalled after the killing; according to the witness, she heard the confrontation unfolding by telephone shortly before the shot.
Brooks gave police his own account. He said Abdur-Rabb had knocked the handgun from him and that she and her son had handled it. He told investigators he generally did not keep a round in the chamber and suggested that the gun could have been loaded while it was away from him. Brooks said he later regained the weapon and struggled with Abdur-Rabb. He told police that when the gun fired, he had “barely touched the trigger.”
That statement would become a striking part of the public reporting, but it was not the last word on how the shooting was judged. Brooks’ account was a statement from a defendant explaining the fatal confrontation. Prosecutors were required to prove their own theory in court. The distinction remained important throughout the case: a defendant’s explanation, a witness statement, a police allegation and a jury finding do not carry the same legal weight.
The case eventually went before an Allen County jury in September 2026. The prosecution presented evidence over four days. The Allen County Prosecutor’s Office identified Deputy Prosecutors Tasha Lee, Ashley Skibinski and Daylan Schurg as the lawyers who tried the case. The Fort Wayne Police Department Homicide Unit had conducted the investigation, and the Indiana State Police Laboratory was credited with assisting.
When the trial ended, jurors needed about one hour and 20 minutes to reach their decision. They found Brooks guilty of murder and the firearm enhancement. The verdict meant the criminal case had moved beyond the allegations contained in the early probable cause documents. Brooks was now a convicted defendant, and the remaining major question was how much time the court would order him to serve.
That question was answered on Oct. 30. Judge Gull sentenced Brooks to 85 years in prison, the maximum term that had been reported as his possible exposure after conviction. The court added $7,150 in restitution. The punishment was imposed roughly 21 months after Abdur-Rabb was killed, a span during which her family had moved through the immediate shock of the shooting, the criminal investigation and the long wait for trial.
The case’s legal milestones can be measured precisely: a shooting on Jan. 30, 2025; an arrest; a homicide ruling from the coroner; a four-day trial; approximately 80 minutes of jury deliberations; a guilty verdict; and an 85-year sentence. The family’s experience is harder to reduce to a sequence of dates. Relatives were describing their loss almost immediately, before any of those later legal outcomes could answer what would happen to Brooks.
One son’s comments shortly after the killing made that difference clear. He said no prison term could make the loss equal because the court could punish a defendant but could not return his mother. His comments were made while Brooks still faced preliminary allegations, so they were expressions of grief rather than findings about guilt. Nearly two years later, however, a jury had reached the legal conclusion the family had waited for, and the judge had imposed the maximum sentence.
The trial also settled the criminal significance of Brooks’ explanation about the weapon. Jurors heard a case in which the shooting was linked to threats and a confrontation over a gun. Brooks’ statement that he had barely touched the trigger did not lead the jury to acquit him on an accidental-shooting theory. Instead, the jury convicted him of murder and found the firearm enhancement established.
For Abdur-Rabb’s relatives, the sentencing changed Brooks’ status but not the underlying loss they had described since February 2025. The court can impose prison time and restitution; it cannot replace a mother and grandmother. The public record now contains both parts of the story: the legal finding that Brooks murdered Abdur-Rabb and the family’s account of the person they lost.
As of Nov. 9, Brooks is serving the consequences of the murder conviction under the 85-year sentence imposed by Allen Superior Court. The sources reviewed for this report do not show a later court order changing the conviction or reducing the punishment.
Author note: Last updated Nov. 9, 2026.