COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- A former Fort Carson soldier and Iraq war veteran was sentenced Monday to 60 years in prison for his part in two homicides and an aggravated robbery in 2007.
Earlier this month Louis Edward Bressler pled guilty to Accessory to Murder in the August 2007 shooting death of Fort Carson Pfc. Robert James, along with Aggravated Robbery, in the October 2007 stabbing of a Colorado Springs woman who was walking to work.
Finally, Bressler was convicted of Conspiracy to Committ Murder in the December 2007 shooting death of Fort Carson Spc. Kevin Shields.
An emotionless Bressler sat still during his sentencing Monday. He took a few moments to apologize to the Shields and James families as well as Erica Ham, the victim he robbed and stabbed last year.
After receiving the maximum sentence, the victims' families and friends gathered in the hall to express their relief.
Pfc. Rose Mendoza, James' sister, said Bressler deserves what he got.
"I fully believe that they will pay for what they did in this life as well as in the next, and God will deal with them and they will get what they deserve," Mendoza said.
Ham said she carries the physical and mental scars from her attack with her all the time. She said she wishes Bressler would have received a life sentence.
"I do not do stuff like I used to do, like I do not go outside at night. I just stay in my house," Ham said.
The Shields family came from across the country for Bressler's sentencing. A handful of them addressed him in court. They said his sentence was too lentient and added they would have preferred the death penalty.
"Although death would be a cop-out to him, so at this point I think I would give him life so he could live every day of his life in a prison cell thinking about what he did to our family. He is a coward," Shields' mother Debra Shields said.
Before the sentencing the defense did file a motion for a new trial, but it was quickly denied by the judge.
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