A West Side man was given a 20-year sentence on Wednesday for fatally shooting his childhood friend while on pretrial release for a federal gun charge.
Marvin Browder, 41, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the 2021 killing of Develle Sprawls before Cook County Judge Kenneth Wadas, court records show. Browder will serve only half of that sentence under Illinois law.
The case against Browder stretched across both federal and state courtrooms. His troubles began in June 2019 when he witnessed a shooting in the 500 block of South Lockwood Avenue in Austin.
Federal prosecutors said surveillance video showed him leaving his child inside a convenience store before running outside with a pistol in hand to search for the shooters. When police arrested him minutes later, they found the gun in his pocket.
Browder allegedly admitted the weapon was his and told detectives he chased the attackers into an alley. When asked if he shot at them, prosecutors said he responded that he “didn’t get a chance to.”
That arrest led to Cook County prosecutors charging Browder as an armed habitual criminal, a Class X felony. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago later took over the case.
But while that case was pending, prosecutors said Browder shot and killed Sprawls, his childhood friend, on April 6, 2021.
The men were hanging out in the West Side home Browder shared with his 91-year-old grandmother when the two got into an argument that escalated in the basement, prosecutors alleged. Browder allegedly shot Sprawls, who collapsed after being shot multiple times. Browder’s grandmother, who suffers from dementia, discovered him lying near the back door.
Browder eventually called 911 and reported that a man had been shot in his yard. Responding officers found Sprawls with a pistol in his hand, but prosecutors argued the gun had no blood on it despite Sprawls’ body and hands being covered in blood.
Investigators also found bloody drag marks leading from the home, five shell casings inside the kitchen garbage can, and more casings in the basement. Detectives noted Sprawls had been shot 14 times.
Browder claimed the shooting resulted from a struggle after Sprawls fired a gun at him, but police said there were no bullet holes in the basement to support that story.
Regarding the federal gun charge, Browder pleaded guilty last December to unlawful transportation of firearms, and U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold sentenced him to four years in prison.
