Malakal Tuel was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in jail for shooting John Papequash in the head outside the 202 bar on Jarvis Street in 2019.

He has already served four years and will get a year-and-a-half credit for each year he served while going through the trial process. He now has an additional four-year prison sentence to serve.

Papequash survived the shooting, though he endured “massive trauma” to his brain, according to court documents.

During a Yukon Supreme Court sentencing hearing last August, Tuel asked for the impact of his traumatic childhood in South Sudan during the Sudanese civil war to be considered, as well as the racism he encountered once he moved to Canada.

In his affidavit, the 39-year-old Tuel recounts how he was taken by the Sudanese government when he was eight years old and forced into military training camps.

By the age of 11, he said, he was in combat, made to wield an AK-47 to kill both the Sudanese government’s enemies and his own wounded comrades.

After escaping to Canada as a teenager, he said, he tried to get counselling, but his stories were dismissed as far-fetched.

Tuel’s affidavit also describes numerous other indignities and racist episodes he experienced living in Calgary, Winnipeg and Whitehorse.

The events leading up to the shooting were described in the Crown’s closing submissions to the court.

Numerous witnesses and surveillance videos had seen Tuel and his friend, Joseph Wuor, at the 202 bar arguing with Papequash, with several incidents of shoving as well.

Just before 1:51 a.m., the Crown’s evidence shows, Tuel and Wuor left the bar.

At 1:56 a.m., Papequash walked out of the bar. A shot was fired nine seconds later.

Witnesses said they had seen Tuel and Wuor approaching the scene, then fleeing in opposite directions after the shot was fired.

An agreed statement of facts in the case says Papequash was shot in the head at close range outside the 202 bar, with an entry wound on his right eyebrow and an exit wound on his right ear.

The RCMP located a spent shell casing at the scene that matched a 9mm Taurus handgun found in Tuel’s Toyota Tacoma during his and Wuor’s arrest.

Wuor was convicted last January of being in a vehicle where he knew there was a prohibited firearm and of possession of cocaine with the purpose of trafficking.

He was sentenced last May to nine months in jail and given credit for six months served.

Tuel was convicted last February of several charges related to the shooting, though he was acquitted of the most serious charge of attempted murder.

He received the stiffest sentence for the charge of discharging a prohibited firearm with the intent to wound.

The drug charges were laid against both men after police found 8.28 grams of crack cocaine in Tuel’s vehicle during the arrest.