Nearly 10 years later, man gets probation for West Deer shooting

Nearly a decade later, a sentence was handed down Thursday for a shooting in West Deer.

Kenneth Kearns will spend three years on probation for the shooting that injured Joe Piole.

Kearns shot Pioli in his West Deer house in 2008. The two had just met two weeks prior and Pioli was staying at Kearns's house while Kearns was doing some work on Pioli's house.

The case has been tied up in the courts for years with at least one mistrial, and the trial has been postponed 19 times.

On Thursday, Pioli testified how his life has dramatically changed and how he could not escape the night that he was shot.

Channel 11 asked Pioli about the fact that the man who shot him will just have three years of probation.

“When (people) see these cases, giving them there years’ probation, they'll keep firing the trigger. They'll keep pulling the trigger. We don't want that. We have children out there. We need to straighten this world out,” Piole said.

Kearns' attorney Pat Thomassey said that he wants to put this case behind him. With regard to the length of this whole process, Thomassey said, “Other than the trials, it also went to the superior court before this last trial, and it was up there for two years. So when you get mistrials, cases linger."

Kearns received three years’ probation as part of a plea agreement. The maximum sentence for the charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon is 10 years in prison.

He was found not guilty of attempted homicide and aggravated assault during a jury trial.

Cox Media Group