GREAT BEND, Kan. (AP) A Great Bend man was sentenced to five years in prison in the death of a girl he injected with morphine last July.
Thirty-one-year-old Joseph Jeffrey Rykiel was sentenced Monday for the death of 15-year-old Jessica Shearer of Garden City.
Rykiel entered an Alford plea in February to involuntary manslaughter.
The Garden City Telegram reports that Shearer was reported missing from the Barton County Youth Care Home three days before her death. She was found dead last July 4th in a basement room Rykiel was renting in Great Bend.
Barton County Attorney Doug Matthews says Rykiel used a morphine prescription for one of the home’s occupants to inject Shearer at least twice. She died from an overdose.
