LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. — A Lancaster County man was convicted earlier this month of multiple counts of attempted murder and one count of robbery for trying, and failing, to kill the same man twice in a two-day span in Aug. 2017, the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday.
Robert Sheets, 34, of Quarryville, remains in Lancaster County Prison on $1 million bail after the jury returned its verdict following a three-day trial.
According to evidence presented at the trial and in the criminal complaint affidavit filed against Sheets by state police:
- Sheets took the victim into a wooded area near Main Street in Conestoga, Manor Township on Aug. 14, 2017. He told the victim there was something in the woods Sheets wanted to show him.
- Sheets ordered the victim to sit on a rock with his hands behind his back. Sheets then grabbed the victim from behind, as if he was attempting to break the victim’s neck. The victim told police he elbowed Sheets in an attempt to escape, but Sheets allegedly pulled out a handgun and shot the victim in the chest.
- After being shot, the victim fell between some rocks and laid there, unconscious and bleeding, until the next morning.
- When the victim awoke the next day, he began yelling for help. His cries alerted Sheets, who returned to the woods, apparently angry that the victim was still alive.
- Sheets then shot the victim a second time, this time behind the right ear. He also hit the victim in the head and neck with a hatchet. The victim passed out.
- When the victim awoke again, he left the scene and walked through nearby cornfield, until he came to a home on Oak Road and was found.
- In addition to gunshot wounds, the victim suffered a lacerated lung, extensive internal bleeding, three deep lacerations to his head and neck, and a broken jaw.
- Sheets also stole the victim's wallet, which contained about $400.
“It was 41 hours from the time the defendant picked up the victim until the time he crawled out of the cornfield and found help,” Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Ponessa said during her closing argument. “He was shot in the chest and left for dead, only later being shot in the back of the head and hit with a hatchet on his head and neck and again left for dead.”
Ponessa said what the victim went through was “straight out of a horror film.”
The victim crawled through a cornfield in August heat, drank from mud puddles and didn’t know if he’d find any help, Ponessa said.
“But from the moment he crawled out of the cornfield, to the moment he was recovering in the hospital, to the moment he came into court to testify, he always said from the beginning that ‘Bobby Sheets did this to me,’” Ponessa said.
Sheets was arrested in Virginia after leading police on a 30-mile chase into Fauquier County a few days after the shootings.
Sentencing will occur at a later date.
