Man who fired potshots at Pittsburgh mail carrier gets 10 years in prison

A federal judge Wednesday sentenced a Pittsburgh man with a history of gun convictions to 10 years in prison after he shot at — but did not injure — a mail carrier on the city’s North Side in 2023.

Authorities said Martinel Humphries, 30, on Jan. 5, 2023, fired four shots at the postal worker while the federal employee was delivering mail on Waldorf Street in Pittsburgh’s Perry North neighborhood.

In December, Humphries signed a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to shooting at the mail carrier and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.

U.S. District Judge Christy Criswell Wiegand on Wednesday sentenced Humphries to 120 months incarceration.

Humphries’ shots missed the mailman, who ducked for cover when he saw the gun, but shattered the glass front door of a nearby home, according to a sentencing document that prosecutors filed in March.

Christopher B. Brown and Linda E. J. Cohn, federal public defenders who represented Humphries, did not return a call seeking comment.

It remains unclear why Humphries fired at the mailman.

“Notably, (the) defendant had no apparent motive for this attack,” federal prosecutors wrote in court documents. “That is, he assaulted a mail carrier and put others at risk of death as well, for no particular reason.”

Humphries had been convicted in 2015 of gun charges in two separate incidents, one in 2013 and the other in 2015, according to federal prosecutors and court records.

He was released from prison in September 2016, prosecutors said. In 2021, he was indicted for carrying a gun which, as a convicted felon, he could not do legally.

He went to jail until June 2022.

It was seven months after Humphries’ got out, while he was still on supervised release, that he shot at the mailman, prosecutors said.

Pittsburgh police recovered a pistol at the crime scene, spokeswoman Cara Cruz said at the time of the shooting.

Several witnesses told police they saw a man, later identified as Humphries, shooting at the mailman from a blue car, Cruz said. Humphries’ blue Subaru later was found a mile away from the crime scene.

Video surveillance provided to police by a nearby homeowner showed Humphries exit a running vehicle while carrying a gun, Cruz said.

Officers later found Humphries walking near a wooded area that separates Pittsburgh’s Brighton Heights neighborhood from Perry North, she said.

On Wednesday, Acting U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti said federal employees like mailmen “must be able to work without fearing for their personal safety.”

“This sentence reflects the seriousness of the defendant’s violent act,” Rivetti said in a prepared statement.