BEDFORD — A Huntingdon County man was sentenced to 15 months to five years in a state prison after pleading no contest to a count of misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter in the crossbow killing of a Claysburg man in May 2021.

Alec Paul Rhoads, now 27, had been at a residence on Railroad Avenue in Liberty Township when he was handed a crossbow to look at, said Bedford County District Attorney Dwight Diehl. The crossbow discharged, and the arrow struck Daren Lingenfelter, 53, in the neck. Lingenfelter died as a result of the wound, Diehl said.

The remaining charges against Rhoads of criminal homicide, third-degree murder, aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person were dismissed. President Judge Travis Livengood also ordered Rhoads to pay a fine of $1,500, a DNA fee and to reimburse the Greensburg crime lab for $6,716.

Livengood said that the imposed involuntary manslaughter sentence will run concurrent to the state prison sentence of six to 12 years he’s serving for two felony counts of possession of firearm prohibited out of Huntingdon County.

Rhoads pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge in 2017, making him ineligible to possess a firearm, online court records show.

Diehl said that the plea agreement had been discussed with those closest to Lingenfelter and that while they were not “totally satisfied” with the length of Rhoads’ prison sentence, they understood the need to make the deal.

When given the opportunity to speak, Rhoads chose to remain silent.

Bedford County Public Defender Karen Hendershot and Diehl explained that they had settled on a no contest plea during Rhoads plea hearing in August 2023, when they both agreed on and acknowledged evidentiary issues of the case.

Hendershot had first pointed to a DNA report that excluded Rhoads as a suspect.

However, nearly a year after former District Attorney Lesley Childers-Potts dropped charges against Rhoads in July 2022, Diehl refiled the charges against him in June 2023 after taking another look at the case.

Diehl said in July 2023 that the case to exclude Rhoads was built on DNA evidence gathered from the crossbow. But “there was never enough DNA to make a profile.”

Rhoads’ DNA couldn’t be excluded, Diehl had said, because there was “nothing to compare it to. … There wasn’t enough DNA to get a sample.”

Hendershot then pointed to the fact that only one crossbow had been taken from the residence as evidence despite multiple being present, that a bow release found by Lingenfelter’s head was never taken as evidence and that she had only recently been given witness interviews conducted in 2021. She also said that Lingenfelter was dating someone in the residence and that everyone else at the scene were related, leaving Rhoads as the odd man out.

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.