BEATRICE, Neb. (AP) - A Texas man will spend decades in prison for the 2019 shooting death of a Lincoln, Nebraska, man at a park in Fairbury.
District Judge Rick Schreiner sentenced 26-year-old Jerry Gilbert of Odessa, Texas, to 45 to 60 years in the killing of Marc Jarrell, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.
“I didn’t mean to shoot him, but I did,” Gilbert said at his sentencing in Jefferson County District Court on Tuesday. “Marc is dead because of me.”
He told the judge not a day passed that he doesn’t think about what he did to Jarrell and his family.
Gilbert pleaded guilty in October to second-degree murder and use of a firearm to commit a felony.
Prosecutor Zachary Blackman called it “a perfect example of a senseless killing.”
Defense attorney Rob Kortus said Gilbert struggled with addiction, which brought him to the park that night, “and it brought him to the circumstances that ultimately led to the death of another human being.”
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