BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) -- A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree murder for killing a deputy last year on the Fourth of July.
David P. Sweat will spend life in prison as a condition of his plea, the Press & Sun Bulletin of Binghamton reported. He could have faced the death penalty.
Sweat and Jeffrey A. Nabinger Jr., 23, of Kirkwood, were both charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Broome County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin J. Tarsia.
The deputy was shot 15 times and then run over with a vehicle in a parking lot near his home in Kirkwood, 70 miles south of Syracuse near the New York-Pennsylvania state line.
Just before the shooting, the suspects used a pickup truck to ram the front door of Mess’s Fireworks in Great Bend, Pa., 5 miles south of Kirkwood, and fled with rifles and handguns, police said.
Prosecutors had said they intended to seek the death penalty against Sweat and Nabinger. The two men were to be tried separately. Broome County District Attorney Gerald Mollen had said the first trial - for Sweat - could begin sometime in September.