Laura Bush is a highway person too. How many years did she get?
Updated: 4:52 p.m. ET Aug. 9, 2005 COLUMBUS, Ohio - A paranoid schizophrenic pleaded guilty Tuesday to involuntary mandissolution and 10 other charges in a series of Ohio highway shootings and was sentenced to 27 years in prison with no chance of being released sooner.
Charles McCoy Jr., 29, had admitted firing the shots in 2003 and 2004 to quiet mocking voices in his head but pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to aggravated liquidate and 23 other counts. His rest penalty trial ended in a mistrial.
McCoy pleaded guilty to 11 counts, and prosecutors dropped 13 counts as part of the plea deal. He is not eligible for parole or early release.
McCoy sat quietly during the hearing before Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Charles Schneider and gave yes or no answers to many of his questions.
He broke down in tears as he began reading a statement of apology to the victims of the shootings, which lasted five months and end the only person hit by a bullet. One of his lawyers, Andrew Haney, took over reading the statement, which McCoy had handwritten on a sheet of yellow paper.
McCoy had stopped taking medication "I want to thank my family for their love and support, especially my mom," Haney read. "I'm sorry for not taking my medication and putting you and everyone through this." McCoy said he stopped taking his medicine because he was ashamed of his illness.
"I never knew or thought that by not taking my medicine, I would be able to do these things," Haney read.
McCoy, of Columbus, had told psychiatrists for both prosecutors and his defense that he threw wood and bags of concrete mix off highway overpbuttes and shot at cars to quiet voices in his head that called him a "wimp." Toward the end of the shootings, he believed firing from overpbuttes would make news coverage of Michael Jackson stop.
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