Nearly one year ago, crowds of firefighters in their dress blues stood beneath a white church steeple in Maryland to honor a brother who was killed doing what they did every day — answering people’s calls for help.

On Friday, they gathered in uniform again, filling the wood-paneled chambers of a Prince George’s County courtroom where the man who fatally shot their colleague was sentenced to four years in prison.

The turnouts both times recalled John “Skillet” Ulmschneider’s dedication to the fire service and the love he had for his family.

Darrell Lumpkin, 62, pleaded guilty this year to an illegal-weapon charge in the shooting that left Ulmschneider dead and injured another firefighter as well as Lumpkin’s brother.

“I’m sorry for the family,” Lumpkin said at his sentencing hearing Friday afternoon. “I was sick at the time.”

Lumpkin’s sentencing came the day before the first anniversary of the shooting.

[Emergency crews honor Md. firefighter who died answering 911 call]

Ulmschneider, 37, volunteer firefighter Kevin Swain, then 19, and Lumpkin’s brother were trying to enter Lumpkin’s home April 15, 2016, worried he was suffering a medical emergency. Lumpkin’s brother had called 911 earlier in the evening requesting a welfare check because Lumpkin, who has diabetes and experiences seizures, had not been responding to messages.

After announcing their presence and knocking several times, Ulmschneider, Swain and Lumpkin’s brother broke down the home’s door. As soon as they entered, Lumpkin opened fire.

Swain said during Friday’s hearing that he was trying to yell “fire department” again to announce their presence, but only the word “fire” came out before he saw a flash of orange and felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He collapsed to the ground bleeding, worried more shots were coming, he said.

“I laid there wondering, ‘What just happened?’ ” Swain said.

Lumpkin was receiving an insufficient amount of insulin at the time and was incoherent from suffering a diabetic episode, said his attorney Brian K. McDaniel.

“He didn’t understand and appreciate who it was who was at the door,” McDaniel said in court, adding that Lumpkin no more wanted to shoot Ulmschneider and Swain than he did his own brother.

McDaniel said he intends to ask for a reconsideration of the sentence at a later date, given his client’s clean record outside of a more-than 30-year-old assault charge.

A grand jury did not charge Lumpkin with manslaughter or murder in Ulmschneider’s killing. Lumpkin told authorities he fired in self-defense because he thought intruders were breaking into his home.

Lumpkin has an assault conviction from the 1980s that bars him from owning a firearm, and he should not have had a gun at the time of the shooting, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Lumpkin lawfully obtained the guns he owned despite his 1985 simple-assault conviction in the District. But Maryland law changed in 2012, subsequently banning him from possessing firearms.

Judge Graydon S. McKee acknowledged that Lumpkin was ill at the time of the shooting but said he should not have had a gun in the first place.

But regardless of whether someone is able to have a gun, “there is always a responsibility” to “use it appropriately” and understand that it is a “deadly instrument,” McKee said.

“There’s been an injury so great that no matter what the court does, it could never be able to rectify this,” McKee said before sentencing Lumpkin to four years in prison.

[Firefighter shot fatally, second wounded in Prince George's]

Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said the “judge has done justice” with his sentence. Prosecutors had asked that Lumpkin be sentenced to five years in prison.

“This case, from the day it occurred, was a case full of misery,” Alsobrooks said. “It was our worst nightmare on the evening that it occurred.”

Prince George’s County Fire Chief Ben Barksdale said he was surprised by the sentence, thinking the judge would have issued a lighter punishment. The chief, however, said no sentence would be satisfying in the tragic case, which has affected the entire department.

“We do approach these calls differently now, but we still answer them,” Barksdale said.

McKee rendered his sentence after emotional testimony from Ulmschneider’s widow, Swain and another firefighter, Michael OBrien, who was on the scene.

Swain, who said he still has two bullets in his body from the shooting, told the judge about the excruciating pain he experienced and the regular night terrors he now suffers. O’Brien recalled the smell of gunpowder and frantically trying to revive Ulmschneider on the way to the hospital.

Both men invoked the past. But Dawn Ulmschneider looked to the future and thought of her 2-year-old daughter who lost the “best dad ever.”

“The hardest days have yet to come,” Dawn Ulmschneider said. “Life is so hard now. Some days I don’t know how I’m going to do all this.”