An Omaha man who shot a 3-year-old girl with a paintball as she played in her front yard has been sentenced to six months in jail.
the Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2007 7:00 pm
An Omaha man who shot a 3-year-old girl with a paintball as she played in her front yard has been sentenced to six months in jail.
Earl Richardson III, 24, had been riding around Lincoln on March 23 in the back of a friend’s Lincoln Town Car, “casually shooting a paintball gun at anything or anybody that caught his particular attention,” Judge Gale Pokorny wrote in Richardson’s sentencing order Friday.
Pokorny said during the afternoon and early evening of March 23, Richardson struck a number of cars and buildings, as well as a little girl.
“She was hit so hard in the back that she knocked to the ground screaming in pain,” he wrote.
Police took a picture of a two-inch welt on the girl’s back.
On Friday, Pokorny sentenced Richardson to 90 days on each of two criminal mischief charges. He had pleaded no contest to the charges.
Richardson has a four-page rap sheet, that includes 17 criminal charges involving violence.
“Mr. Richardson needs to know where mindless, gratuitous violence will take him,” Pokorny’s order said.