Thomas Massenburg, of Brooklyn, sentenced to 40 years in prison for killing Rashawn Cummings in 2020

A reputed Brooklyn gang member will spend the next 40 years, possibly longer, behind bars for a deadly 2020 Fourth of July house party shooting in North Massapequa that killed one man and wounded two others.

Thomas Massenburg, 24, who was 19 when he fired the lethal bullets, was found guilty in September of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, assault and two counts of criminal possession of a gun.

It took the jury five hours to render its verdict.

Massenburg, a reputed member of the Mac Baller Bloods gang, shot Rashawn Cummings, 21, in the back at a basement party in a North Massapequa home around 11:15 p.m. after a fight during an Independence Day celebration.

Massenburg and his friends were ordered out of the party at gunpoint by a friend of Cummings. They left, but then Massenburg got a gun from a fellow gang member and went back into the basement to settle the dispute, officials said.

Massenburg shot Cummings and another man and then was shot himself by a member of Cummings’ group, prosecutors said.

Nassau County prosecutor Stefanie Palma, during a Tuesday morning hearing, urged the judge to sentence Massenburg to the maximum sentence — 50 years to life in prison — because, she said, he chose violence.

"He didn’t have to shoot anyone," Palma said. "He chose to come back in the room and start shooting — that’s the choice that Thomas Massenburg made."

He was arrested and charged in June 2021. As the case progressed, Palma said, Massenburg reached out through his gang network to intimidate a woman eyewitness not to testify. The woman became so distraught that she checked herself into a hospital because she was having suicidal thoughts over testifying, the prosecutor said.

Cummings' family sat in the courtroom on Tuesday morning, weeping at a photo of him that had been projected onto one of the court’s TV screens.

His father, Anthony Cummings, told the judge that he also lost his father to gun violence.

"The last four years have been very hard on me, losing my son, not being to hold a conversation with him," he said. "Going to the cemetery is the only way that I can talk to him, but he can’t talk to me."

He called Massenburg a coward for shooting his son in the back.

Cummings' mother, Celia Riddley, also spoke to the court ahead of the sentencing, admitting that her son "was not an angel."

"Shawny B, he got that name because he like to fight," she said. "He was a rough little boy."

But, she said, he settled his disputes with his fists, not guns.

"I always told my children if you have to fight, you fight with your hands, and if you lose, you get back up and you forget about it," she said.

Massenburg looked back at his family and smiled as she spoke and shook his head when she called him a "coward."

State Supreme Court Justice Howard Sturim told Massenburg that his rash act had hurt his own family as well.

"There is your family. They are also the victims. What you have done has hurt them almost as much as the Cummings family," he said.

As far as his fellow gang members who had handed him the gun that allowed him to kill, the judge noted that they were not there for him.

"There’s no glory in what you’ve done," Sturim said. "You were forgotten minutes after this happened, and, unfortunately, you are going to spend the rest of your life in prison."

The judge ordered that his murder and attempted murder charges run consecutively, totaling 40 years to life. The other charges will run concurrently.

Massenburg did not speak before the sentence, but after the hearing, his lawyer, Sam Karliner, vowed to appeal the case.