Updated at 6:12 p.m.
The man accused of murdering a childhood acquaintance in Burlington’s Old North End in 2022 was sentenced last month to 14 years in prison.
Abdiaziz Abdhikadir was 19 years old when he gunned down 21-year-old Hussein Mubarak on Luck Street in July 2022. At the time, police said the execution-style murder was related to an ongoing dispute between the men’s families.
On December 30, Abdhikadir pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter and guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice. In an email, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George said the state lacked strong evidence in the case and that, had it gone to trial, there was a “strong potential for an acquittal.”
“This resolution is not perfect — but it was a balanced resolution weighing the risks of trial with public safety, coupled with Abdi’s very young age and prospects upon release,” she wrote. “No punishment was going to bring Hussein back,” George added, but the sentence will “keep Abdi out of the community for a significant amount of time.”
Mubarak was murdered amid a spate of gun violence that plagued the Queen City in 2022. Many of the incidents involved new American youths, an issue Seven Days explored in the cover story “Warning Shots.” Nearly all the cases have been resolved in court, George announced in a press release this week.
Abdhikadir was a central figure in social circles involved in violent crime. Before his arrest for Mubarak’s murder, he had been implicated in car thefts and other gun-related incidents in Burlington and elsewhere in Chittenden County, Seven Days previously reported.
In February 2022, Abdhikadir fired a gun at the Mubarak family home on Riverside Avenue while Mubarak was incarcerated on a federal drug charge. Initially charged with attempted murder, Abdhikadir pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon last August and will serve five to seven years concurrent to his latest sentence. Several of his other charges were dismissed as part of the December plea deal, court records show.
Other resolved cases include those involving Abukar Hilowle, who committed two gun-related crimes in as many days in August 2022. In the first incident, Hilowle shot an acquaintance while they were sitting in a vehicle. Two days later, he shot and wounded two strangers in downtown Burlington after he claimed one of them used a racial slur. He was carrying two 9mm pistols at the time.
In August 2024, Hilowle was sentenced to five to 15 years after pleading guilty to negligent use of a firearm and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The state had asked for a slightly longer sentence of 1o to 15 years, George said.
An October 2022 murder case was wrapped up last November when a jury convicted Denroy Dasent of fatally shooting Sheikhnoor Osman of Burlington and Brian Billings of South Burlington in quick succession. Dasent was being held without bail pending a sentencing hearing, which has not yet been set.
Another 2022 murder case is still working its way through court. Christopher Crawford, a New Jersey man, is accused of shooting Bryan C. Rogers II of Philadelphia in Burlington’s City Hall Park during a busy Labor Day weekend. A trial hasn’t been scheduled, George said.
Rates of gun violence in Burlington have largely decreased since 2022. The city tallied 11 gunfire incidents in 2025 compared to 26 three years earlier.
“With this violence behind us, and the people responsible held accountable, we can begin to move forward as a community, together,” George said in the press release.