Linda Mendoza speaks to the media outside of Superior Court in Providence yesterday, after the conviction of Barry Offley in the 2006 murder of her daughter, Jessica Imran of Pawtucket.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE — When Alonzo P. Shelton was found guilty last spring of murdering one woman and wounding another, the case was only half finished.

Barry Offley, Shelton’s nephew and alleged accomplice, was waiting to be tried separately for the crime.

Yesterday, a jury in Superior Court brought the case to a close, finding Offley guilty of murder, conspiracy to murder, assault with intent to murder and discharging a firearm during an act of violence, death resulting.

Offley, whose case was severed from Shelton’s, was convicted as his uncle was of shooting and wounding 28-year-old Julie Lang and shooting and killing her friend, 24-year-old Jessica Imran, after he and Shelton entered Imran’s Pawtucket apartment during the early morning hours of July 27, 2006.

Lang took the witness stand during both trials and gave a chilling account of the shooting, describing how Offley shot and killed Imran and then pointed the gun at her, intending to kill her, too.

The gun jammed, Shelton seized it from Offley and shot her four times, Lang testified, allegedly because she was insisting that the crack cocaine found in her pocketbook by Woonsocket police during a traffic stop belonged to him.

At the time, Shelton, 28, was in jeopardy of being sent back to prison, having served 3 years of a 20-year sentence for assault with a dangerous weapon.

“Why are you doing this?” Lang said Shelton demanded when she insisted he take the rap for cocaine possession. “You know it’s just a charge for you. It’s 6 to 10 years for me.”

Prosecutors characterized Offley, who had lived in Providence and was 19 at the time of the shooting, as a “tool” or extension of Shelton, taking part in the shooting because he didn’t want to see his uncle sent back to jail.

The jury of five men and seven women apparently believed that, deliberating just two hours before finding Offley guilty.

They apparently didn’t buy Offley’s testimony that, although he entered Imran’s apartment carrying the murder weapon, he took it out only as a joke to scare Lang.

In 2½ hours on the witness stand Tuesday, Offley claimed that his uncle did the shooting, taking the 9mm pistol from him and turning it on Imran and Lang after it went off by accident and then jammed.

“I’m grateful to the jury but I can’t say I’m surprised by the swiftness of the verdict,” said Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, who was in the courtroom when the jury found Offley guilty.

Lynch cited “the heinous and callous nature and the brutality” of the shooting and said he trusts Judge Robert D. Krause to impose a sentence commensurate with the crime.

As a result of his conviction, Offley, who has no prior criminal record, faces two consecutive life sentences, according to prosecutors — one for murdering Imran, the other for discharging the firearm that caused her death.

In July, Krause gave Shelton 72 years.

Imran’s mother, Linda Mendoza, attended both trials and endured hours of grim evidence and testimony, including a crime scene photograph showing her 4-foot, 10-inch daughter sprawled out on the floor of her apartment, dead of a gunshot wound to the spine.

When the guilty verdict was read, Mendoza and other family members reacted with tears and gratitude, hugging and shaking hands with the prosecutors, Paul A. Carnes and Stacey P. Verona, and with the lead investigator, Pawtucket police Detective William P. Magill.

“I look at this family, subjected to this process” and can’t help feeling sorry, Lynch said after the verdict.

“The justice we bring them doesn’t cure the pain.”

Jessica Imran grew up in Central Falls and worked as an escort, according to prosecutors.

Mendoza said her daughter was “a sweet, loving kid” who loved to dance and displayed her talent at age 7, when she was first runner-up in the Miss Central Falls Recreation beauty contest in 1989.

“She was an exotic dancer” — a profession her family wasn’t happy about, but accepted, Mendoza said in an interview.

The guilty verdict was “a relief,” Mendoza said, even though she said she felt a little more numb during Offley’s trial than during Shelton’s six months ago.

Mendoza said she wasn’t upset when Offley took the witness stand and claimed innocence.

“A person who doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in jail will say anything, so I was prepared for that,” she said.

Offley has been held at the Adult Correctional Institutions since he and his uncle were arrested Sept. 7, 2006, in Ocala, Fla., where they fled and stayed with a friend of Offley’s following the shooting.

Offley showed no emotion when the jury found him guilty and Judge Krause remanded him to custody of the sheriffs, who placed him in a holding cell before returning him to the ACI.

“I just went down and talked to him,” Offley’s lawyer, Terence Livingston, said afterward. “He’s obviously very disappointed. He maintains his innocence. But we accept the jury’s verdict.”

Livingston said he plans to appeal the conviction.

jcastell@projo.com