Fresno man sentenced to 28 years to life for shooting at officers

Bradley Nicholson will spend 28 years to life in prison after a Fresno County judge said the gunfire he directed at two Fresno police officers could easily have become a murder case.

Nicholson, 41, was sentenced Thursday in Fresno County Superior Court by Judge Raj Singh Badhesha after pleading no contest to attempted murder of a police officer and assault on a peace officer. Court reporting said he received 14 years to life, plus a consecutive 14-year term, after also admitting a prior strike conviction and an aggravating factor.

The case began the evening of Dec. 7, 2025, when Fresno police approached Nicholson near West Avenue and Clinton Avenue after suspicious activity had been reported in an alley. Police said the contact started as a compliance check tied to Nicholson’s post-release community supervision, then turned violent in seconds. Body camera footage later released by police showed Nicholson repeatedly saying, “let me go,” before he fired his weapon.

Officers returned fire as the encounter escalated. Nicholson was struck once in the upper body, then barricaded himself in a nearby carport before surrendering after an hour and 20 minutes with SWAT involvement. The officers were not physically hurt, but one bullet went through the top of an officer’s department baseball cap, a near miss prosecutors said underscored how close the shooting came to killing a police officer.

Fresno County Deputy District Attorney James Butkus said the cap strike showed the danger officers faced during the encounter. The sentence closes a case that had already drawn public attention after Fresno police released the critical-incident video on Feb. 27, 2026, showing how quickly a routine contact can collapse into a life-threatening ambush.

For Nicholson’s victims and for the officers who responded that night, the plea and sentence bring a formal end to the criminal case. For Fresno residents, the outcome also sends a clear message about how county courts are treating shootings at police officers: when gunfire is directed at law enforcement, the response can carry decades behind bars.