VERSAILLES, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper will spend 10 days in jail and two years on supervised probation for the death of a handcuffed man who drowned when he fell out of the trooper’s boat.
Trooper Anthony Piercy was sentenced Tuesday in the May 2014 death of Brandon Ellingson on the Lake of the Ozarks.
The Kansas City Star reports Piercy avoided a trial for involuntary manslaughter by pleading guilty in June to a misdemeanor, negligent operation of a vessel.
Piercy pulled Ellingson over on the Lake of the Ozarks for suspicion of boating while intoxicated. Ellingson drowned after a wave threw him off the boat without a secured life vest.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Ellingson’s father, Craig Ellingson, of Clive, Iowa, said Piercy was the reason his son was dead.
