A Maleng Regional Justice Center judge sentenced a Puyallup man, convicted of murdering his former Federal Way boss, to 31 1/2 years Friday morning.

A jury found Kareem Harris, 32, guilty last month of first-degree murder and weapons enhancement charges. Harris initially faced second-degree attempted murder charges but they were amended to murder after Wilbur Lee Gant passed away on Jan. 10, 2011 of injuries directly related to when Harris shot him multiple times in 2009, just 15 months prior.

Harris and Gant worked together at Milgard Windows in Fife until Harris was fired in May 2009 for lying on his timecard. Court records said he was leaving work early and getting a coworker to clock him out at the proper time.

As Harris’s supervisor, Gant was the one who discovered the timecard fraud and testified against him in an unemployment hearing to deny Harris benefits. After the hearing, court documents say Harris threatened Gant with a gun he kept under his seat and was “not afraid to use it.”

About five months later, Federal Way police were dispatched at 5:26 a.m., on Oct. 28, 2009 to Gant’s apartment complex, located at 127 S. 340th St. in Federal Way, and found him laying in the parking lot with several gunshot wounds.

People called 911 with reports of hearing six gunshots and a man screaming for help.

Gant was laying 30-40 feet away from his vehicle, which had a broken driver’s window and a bloody driver’s seat.

As police approached, he told them it was Harris who had shot him because he was fired earlier that year.

Miami-Dade County police arrested Harris in Miami, Florida on Dec. 28, 2009 and he was transported to a Washington jail where he was held on a $1 million bail.

Gant began to recover from his injuries but ultimately died a little more than a year later. In February 2011, the King County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Gant’s death was in direct relation to the shooting injuries he had received.

After Harris serves his prison time, he’ll have three years of probation.