A Nueces County jury has sent Rakim Sharkey to prison for 35 years.

Sharkey was 31 when Corpus Christi police arrested him. The jury found him guilty. The sentence is 35 years. KIII-TV reported the outcome on Tuesday.

The case goes back to a spring morning in 2025.

It was Monday, April 28, 2025. The time was about 7:30 a.m. A neighbor on Foster Drive called police. The caller said a man with a gun was near a house.

Officers got there fast. What they found was worse than a man in a yard. Police say a man had gone inside the home. Police say he was holding the people inside at gunpoint.

Cops set up a ring around the house. They pulled two women and one man out. Then they went in. They found a man who was hurt. His injuries were minor. An ambulance took him to the hospital.

The standoff went on for almost four hours. A SWAT team worked the scene the whole time.

"They do have a few individuals detained at this time," Senior Officer Antonio Contreras said that morning. "Our detectives are sorting it out at this time to see what role each individual is involved with. There are no major injuries reported at this time."

Police arrested two men that day. One was Sharkey. The other was Dantril Tapp-Hawkins, 20. KRIS 6 News reported both names and both ages.

Both men were booked on burglary of a habitation with intent to commit another felony. Both were booked on unlawful restraint. Unlawful restraint means holding a person against their will.

Texas Public Radio reported more. TPR said the two men went into the home with a shotgun. TPR said they meant to rob the people inside. Sharkey also picked up a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

Police took marijuana, pills, cash and guns from the scene, TPR reported.

This was not Sharkey's first time in front of a judge.

San Antonio police arrested him in 2017. He faced sex trafficking charges. Three people were named in that case. Two of them were girls under 18.

He was looking at 25 years to life in prison.

The Bexar County District Attorney stepped away from the case. The Texas Attorney General's office took it over. That office is run by Ken Paxton.

The case dragged on for years. A judge called a mistrial in June 2022. COVID had hit witnesses and other people tied to the trial.

Then came January 2023. Sharkey pleaded no contest to a smaller charge. That charge was aggravated promotion of prostitution.

He got seven years of probation. He got 120 hours of community service. He got no prison time. He did not have to sign up as a sex offender.

TPR reported that a prosecutor named James Winters cut the deal. Winters was the eighth prosecutor to touch the case.

The mother of one of the girls told TPR she felt lied to.

"They said they were going to make it so he would go to prison for a long time," she said.

Two years later, police say Sharkey was inside a Corpus Christi home with a gun.

The Attorney General's office asked a court to end his probation in 2025. Court records list the reasons. New criminal charges. Missed drug tests. Leaving the county without asking. Guns.

TPR asked Paxton's office about the case. A spokesperson did not answer.

Deals like the one Sharkey got are not rare. Prosecutors cut them every week in courthouses from Corpus Christi to Rio Grande City. Most never make the news. Cases stall. Witnesses move. Prosecutors leave. Files get handed to the next lawyer, then the next one.

Sharkey's file got handed off eight times. The ninth chapter was written by a jury in Nueces County.

He is headed to a Texas state prison now. The San Antonio case never put him behind bars. The Corpus Christi case did.