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This story was updated at 5:35 p.m. Jan. 31, 2011.

With 37 years of experience as a police officer, Capt. Lionel Aaron has worked a lot of tough cases. But he said none compares with last week, when Aaron sat through the three-day trial of the man accused of fatally shooting his daughter.

On Monday, a jury convicted the man, Adrian F. Lewis, of killing Aaron's daughter, 32-year-old Cynthia D. Aaron, and shooting another man, innocent bystanders caught in gunfire in a Suitland bar parking lot.

After deliberating Friday afternoon and Monday morning, a Prince George's County jury found Lewis, 21, of Suitland, guilty of the second-degree murder of Aaron and attempted second-degree murder of Walter Corey Britt, 34. The two were shot April 10 outside of Andrew's Restaurant and Lounge.

Britt was critically injured but survived and testified in Prince George's County Circuit Court that Lewis was the man who shot him. The trial began Tuesday in Judge Melanie M. Shaw Geter's courtroom.

A prosecutor in the case alleged the shooting stemmed from a scuffle that broke out between Lewis and several others in the bar parking lot at closing time, near 2 a.m.

"He wanted revenge. He wanted to get back at the four or five people who beat him up," said Assistant State's Attorney E. Wesley Adams in court.

Pointing to cell phone GPS records that tracked Lewis' movements back to his mother's Suitland apartment before gunfire erupted, Adams said that Lewis drove home to grab a gun before returning to the parking lot. When he couldn't find the people he fought with earlier, Adams alleged, Lewis began firing indiscriminately at people in the parking lot, striking both Britt and Aaron, neither of whom was involved in the original fight or knew each other.

The jury found Lewis not guilty of first-degree murder in Aaron's death, a charge that would have required prosecutors to prove Lewis planned to shoot her.

"Not one shred of evidence is out there that he intended to hurt her," said Lewis' attorney, David Simpson, in court.

Lewis, who testified in his own defense, said he did not own a gun and drove away from the bar immediately after the fight.

"I got up, got away and ran away from them," he said of the fight. "I pulled straight off and went to my mother's residence."

Neither a gun nor clothing Lewis was seen wearing that night at the bar was ever recovered. Lewis said at the time he was arrested, his clothing was scattered across several friends' homes because he was in the process of moving and not all of it could be found.

Lewis' family declined to comment in court.

Lewis' sentencing has been scheduled for April 6. He faces a total of 100 years in prison for the second-degree murder and attempted murder convictions as well as for two convictions of using a handgun in a crime of violence.

Aaron moved to Glenn Dale a little more than a year before she was killed to go to nursing school, her father said. She was living with her older brother and her 12-year-old daughter and had gone out with a friend to run an errand before stopping at the bar.

Lionel Aaron, who flew in from his home in Houston for the trial, said sitting through the proceedings was the hardest thing he has ever had to do, but the experience at least has given their family some closure.

"I needed to know — our family needed to know — what happened," he said.

anoble@gazette.net