LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 30-year-old Nevada man has been sentenced to eight-to-20 years in prison for using a hammer to pummel a mannequin that police posed like a sleeping homeless person in a bid to catch a killer in downtown Las Vegas.
Shane Schindler said nothing in court during sentencing Thursday following his guilty plea in June to an unusual charge of attempted murder of an inanimate object.
The former Bay City, Michigan, resident admitted then that he thought the dummy he attacked was a person.
Schindler's court-appointed lawyer, Ashley Sisolak, calls the agreed-upon sentence an appropriate resolution to the case.
Police think Schindler bludgeoned two men to death and injured a third in previous nighttime attacks, but they didn't have evidence until Schindler was caught on video bashing the dummy.
Prosecutors dropped charges in those cases as part of his plea deal.
