A Mattapan man with a long criminal record was sentenced to life in prison today for shooting a drug dealer and beating a witness during a robbery inside an Upham’s Corner rooming house three and a half years ago, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

SHAHEED ABDULLAH (D.O.B. 6/25/67), a.k.a. SEAN FULLER, was convicted in October of armed robbery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, aggravated assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and unlawful possession of a firearm for the Aug. 25, 2008, incident on Hartford Street.

Because of prior state prison sentences for armed robbery convictions in 1987, 1993, and 1999, Conley’s office indicted Abdullah as an habitual offender under Ch. 279, Sect. 25, of the Massachusetts General Laws and as a Level III armed career criminal under Ch. 269, Sect. 10G.

At a second trial on Jan. 4 and 5, Suffolk prosecutors proved that Abdullah is the same individual convicted and sentenced in those cases. As a result, he faced mandatory imposition of the maximum penalty for the underlying lead felony – in this case, armed robbery. That offense carries up to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Regina Quinlan imposed that life term along with concurrent prison terms for the other offenses.

“This defendant has been destabilizing the community for decades,” Conley said. “His sentence is appropriate to the facts of the case and his record as a violent repeat offender. The public at large will be safer with him behind bars.”

Assitsant District Attorney David Bradley of Conley’s Major Felony Bureau proved at the first trial that Abdullah arranged a drug deal at the Hartford Street scene in advance of the robbery. Facilitating that deal was a 50-year-old Roxbury man. Shortly before 6:00, the evidence showed, the dealer – a 49-year-old Dorchester resident – arrived. The deal’s facilitator left Shaheed and the dealer alone in a room for a moment, at which time Shaheed robbed the dealer of $400 in cash, a Rolex watch, and five bags of crack cocaine at the point of a semiautomatic handgun. Shaheed then shot the dealer, injuring him in the hand and leg.

When the deal’s facilitator came back into the room, Bradley demonstrated, Shaheed beat him in the head with the pistol and fled the scene. Another person in the residence called 911 and both victims were transported to Boston Medical Center.

The victims described their assailant to Boston Police detectives but were unable to identify him by name. The man who facilitated the botched drug deal also told Boston Police that he’d travelled to a cash machine and a Grove Hall supermarket with the suspect during the prior weekend. Detectives reviewed surveillance video from that cash machine and market, identified the assailant making an ATM transaction, and then obtained bank records from the relevant time period. Those records identified him as Abdullah.

Two days after the Hartford Street shooting but before he was identified through the bank surveillance and transaction records, Abdullah was wounded by a still-unknown person during an Aug. 27 gun battle on Algonquin Street. Abdullah was still at Boston Medical Center recovering from that shooting when Boston Police charged him with the Aug. 25 armed robbery, shooting, and beating.

At trial, Bradley elicited testimony from Boston Police ballisticians to prove that the shell casing from the Hartford Street scene was a ballistic match with the firearm found near Abdullah on Algonquin Street.

Bradley also introduced the testimony of criminalists from the Boston Police Latent Print Unit, proving that a fingerprint on the magazine inside the Algonquin Street firearm matched a fingerprint on a drinking glass at the Hartford Street scene. Both of those prints matched Abdullah, the evidence showed, and the Hartford Street victims later identified Abdullah from separate photo arrays.

Abdullah was represented at both trials by attorney Charles Jordan.