Wolowski sentenced in 2013 robbery-murder

A former Washington man was formally sentenced on Thursday for a 2013 botched robbery that ended with one person dead and another wounded.
Washington County Judge John F. DiSalle sentenced Brandon Wolowski, 24, to life in prison without parole in the Jan. 8, 2013, killing of Matthew Mathias, 37, plus another 20 to 40 years in prison on charges of attempted murder and robbery also filed by city police just hours after they detained Wolowski at a nearby house.
Jurors convicted Wolowski of first-degree murder and the other charges in March. Police said Wolowski had shot Mathias and Mathias’ girlfriend, Michelle Powell, during a failed attempt at stealing a cache of firearms the older man was keeping in a safe at the couple’s Fayette Street home.
Powell was shot at least twice and survived wounds in her jaw, abdomen and one arm. She gave her account of the robbery-shooting during Wolowski’s trial.
Prosecutors had contended that the danger Wolowski had created for Powell and the fact that he had killed Mathias in the course of committing another felony were aggravating factors that weighed in favor of the death penalty under state law.
The jurors ultimately decided that mitigating factors – Wolowski’s young age, 18 at the time of the shooting, and a traumatic childhood in which abuse was pervasive – outweighed those elements. Instead, the panel recommended a life sentence.
Deputy District Attorney Leslie Ridge said she considered it important for the court to hand down a sentence that reflected the offenses against Powell as well as Mathias.
“The reason that I asked for a consecutive sentence to the life sentence is that we had a second victim,” Ridge said, “and I thought it was important that we had a separate, consecutive sentence for his actions against that second victim.”
Noah Geary, Wolowski’s court-appointed attorney, didn’t immediately return a message Friday afternoon. Geary previously said he expected to appeal the conviction.
A trial in a separate case stemming from an allegation that Wolowski assaulted another Washington County jail inmate in 2014 is scheduled for September.