A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge has sentenced a former Pentagon police officer to 25 years in prison for fatally shooting two men outside a Takoma Park condo building in April of 2021, according to a spokesperson for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s office.

The former officer, David Hall Dixon, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in September. The guilty plea followed a jury trial that ended in a mistrial in February after the jury could not agree unanimously on a verdict.

Dixon, who was an off-duty officer with the Pentagon Force Protection Agency at the time, killed 32-year-old Dominique Williams and 38-year-old James Lionel Johnson while they were in a car driving away from him in the parking lot outside of his condo building.

Williams and Johnson were close friends, according to family members who spoke about them at a vigil shortly after the fatal shooting. A third friend, Michael Thomas, was driving the car Dixon shot into and survived.

During the trial, Dixon claimed he feared for his life and was trying to make a citizens’ arrest of the men for breaking into cars. According to video surveillance presented during the trial, Dixon pointed his gun at the men after he encountered them in the parking lot. They got in the car and began to flee, and Dixon shot at the car as they were driving away. The footage, prosecutors argued, proved the men presented no threat to Dixon.

“Mr. Williams and Mr. Johnson should be alive today,” the prosecutors wrote in court documents, according to the Post. “If they were committing an offense, there are penalties for their misdeeds.”

After the killing of Williams and Johnson, multiple news outlets also published footage showing a previous incident where Dixon pointed a gun at an unhoused woman in the lobby of the same condo building; prosecutors noted this previous incident in their case against Dixon, the Post reported.

“He pulled a gun on a homeless woman … dealing with mental health issues,” Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando said at the vigil in 2021. “Then months later, he shoots two fathers, two men, two brothers, two sons in the back because he saw them and thought they were Black and doing something wrong. That type of person doesn’t need to be a police officer.”

Dixon has been held in jail since his arrest in April of 2021.