An Allen Superior Court jury all but sealed a life in prison for 19-year-old Anthony A. Parish on Wednesday, returning four guilty verdicts - including one for attempted murder - after less than two hours of deliberation.

Parish, already serving more than 40 years for a separate attempted-murder conviction and a criminal recklessness count, was found guilty of another attempted murder charge, as well as felony aggravated battery, misdemeanor-turned-felony carrying a handgun without a license and pointing a firearm, for firing about five shots into then-41-year-old Dennis Salley on Aug. 6 as he walked near the intersection of Caroline and Suttenfield streets.

The jury returned the convictions an hour and 46 minutes after deliberations began.

“We feel we were able to put Mr. Parish where he belongs,” said Deputy Prosecutor Steve Godfrey after the convictions.

Parish will be sentenced Aug. 7.

The trial's signature moment was when Parish's victim, Salley, identified Parish as the shooter during his testimony to open proceedings on Tuesday. Salley reiterated several times through Godfrey's questioning, and defense attorney John Bohdan's cross examination, that he stared at Parish before the first shot and as he was running away from a spray of four more bullets.

Salley detailed the incidents leading up to the shooting, in which he detoured a Lafayette Street walk to get a late dinner in order to stop by a friend's house, before coming upon two groups of young men standing beside a white vehicle.

Salley yelled to the group, asking if his friend was there, to which the group said he wasn't. Salley said a man asked him what he wanted, and Salley said, “I'm straight.”

Salley said Parish then emerged from the group and said, “then get your punk (expletive) off the block.”

Salley said he turned to confront Parish and got within five feet of the man before hearing and feeling a gunshot to his chest.

Salley said he turned to run and felt more shots to his stomach, side, thigh and calf - once turning to see Parish chasing him - as he ran a block and a half away to a Warsaw Street home, where he collapsed on its porch.

There, paramedics found him critically injured before transferring him to Parkview Hospital, where Salley would spend two months recovering.

Salley lost his right kidney, his liver was cut in half and he suffered extensive damage to his leg.

Bohdan tried to focus on Salley's “foggy” memory of the shooting during his closing arguments. Bohdan questioned the man's ability to see Parish or any shooter while he was running away, and wondered aloud to the jury how Salley, with his “self-proclaimed superior skills of observation,” could not remember Parish's arm was in a very distinctive sling.

Bohdan tried to remind the jury Salley never placed a gun in Parish's hand during the shooting, and that the crime scene that showed bullet casings in one central location played against Salley's testimony that Parish was chasing him while firing.

Even mentioning Salley was drinking the night of the shooting, that his recollection could be tainted due to the speed of the exchange, and that the prosecution failed to call any members of the two groups of witnesses didn't sway the jury - eight women, four men, all white - that returned the verdict, evoking tears among Parish's family in the courtroom gallery.

Allen Superior Court Judge Fran Gull then informed the jury it would need to vote a second time on raising the carrying of a handgun without a license charge from a standard misdemeanor to a Class C felony, because Parish had a 2007 conviction of the same charge.

The jury returned that decision 20 minutes later with approval.

Salley was not in court Wednesday.

After Parish was led from the courtroom, as expressionless as he was throughout the trial, Bohdan exited and made a simple comment of, “We're puzzled.”

The two men will be back in court next month, when Parish stands an unrelated three-day murder trial scheduled for Aug. 18 for charges of allegedly gunning down 30-year-old Antoine J. Woods on Aug. 24 outside the Dove Shack Bar on Lumbard Street.

Parish already has been sentenced to 40 years on an attempted-murder charge in the Oct. 1 shooting of Andrea L. Terrell, and has begun serving a 1 1/2 -year sentence for criminal recklessness for firing shots into a newspaper carrier's car in June 2008.

Parish was arrested Oct. 10 after a standoff with police.