Before he imposed automatic life sentences on three men Tuesday, a Toronto judge lit into the gang rivalry motive behind the “senseless, cruel and cowardly” 2018 killing of a “regular, decent guy” who was ambushed from behind and shot to death.

“The gang rivalries that these men are a part of need to be denounced for what they are: childish, foolish, stupid and dangerous,” Superior Court Justice Robert Goldstein said during a sentencing hearing held by teleconference.

Electrical engineer Nnamdi Ogba, 26, was visiting a friend from his soccer team when he was gunned down while walking to his car at Scarlett Wood Court just after 11 p.m. on March 16, 2018.

At the time, Goldstein said, Ogba probably did not know he was walking through territory controlled by the Scarlett Wood Crips, and that three members of a rival west-end Toronto gang, C3, were driving around in a stolen SUV “looking for someone to murder.”

During the trial, the jury heard that Abdirahman Islow parked the Nissan Rogue, then Abdullahi Mohamed and Trevaughan Miller spotted Ogba, ran up to him and shot him from behind.

“Mr. Ogba had nothing to do with any gang rivalries. He was just collateral damage to these men,” Goldstein said.

The trio’s later celebrations were captured on the copious amount of surveillance video seized by investigators. Goldstein praised the good, painstaking police work that solved the case.

The judge also further denounced the “outlandish” display of guns on (cellphone) videos — which the jury saw during the trial — that “only demonstrates this idiocy.

“These gang rivalries are so dangerous, not only to the fools who engage in them and encourage them but also to completely innocent civilians who want nothing to do with them,” he said.

As Islow, Mohamed and Miller listened in via telephone from the Toronto South Detention Centre, Goldsetin sentenced them each to mandatory life imprisonment without parole eligibility for 25 years.

Jurors deliberated for several days and returned with their verdicts on March 13, just before the COVID-19 pandemic suspended all jury trials.

On Tuesday, Ogba’s mother Margaret Nwosu read her victim-impact statement over the phone, describing pain and anguish of losing her eldest son. Ogba was a role model for his younger brothers and “other young ones in our Nigerian community,” she said, and now “their light in shining armour is gone and they are all devastated.”

Nwosu, who sat through the trial, said her teen sons want to lead a normal life, but she is now “constantly worried and fearful” for them.

“I had thought that Canada was a safe place to raise my children but with all this gun violence and killings, it’s difficult as a parent not to be concerned.”

She called the three men remorseless killers.

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“May the spirit of Nnamdi haunt them the rest of their miserable lives.”

As a Christian, Nwosu said she believes in forgiveness, but without “true repentance, there is no forgiveness of sins.”

When the judge asked the three if they had anything to say, only Miller spoke: He said he was “sorry for what happened to Mr. Ogba, and condolences for the family.”