A 21-year-old man received a term of more than seven years Monday for fatally shooting a downtown Minneapolis apartment resident and then throwing the gun from a balcony down to the roof of the WCCO-TV building.

Mohamed A.S. Zaher, of Minneapolis, was sentenced in Hennepin County District Court after pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter in connection with the shooting of Ahmed Elsaied, 31, on Aug. 7, 2022, in the building at Marquette Avenue and S. 10th Street.

With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Zaher is expected to serve roughly 4 2⁄3 years of his term in prison and the balance on supervised release.

In exchange for his guilty plea, a charge of second-degree unintentional murder was dismissed.

According to the criminal complaint:

Officers arrived at the building, where witnesses told them about a man who threw a gun from a 13th-floor balcony onto the WCCO roof. Police found Zaher in the apartment building lobby with blood on his clothing and hands.

The officers entered Elsaied's apartment and saw him on the floor, suffering from a gunshot wound to the side of the head. He died about 45 minutes later at HCMC.

Zaher told police that he and Elsaied were friends and that he had been staying at the apartment for the past several months. Zaher said he was handling the gun and "while trying to pull the slide back … he had his finger on the trigger, and the gun went off," the charges read.