MISSOULA, Mont. — A Montana man wasn’t defending his family but rather hunting someone when he shot and killed a German high school student who was trespassing in his garage, a judge said Thursday as he sentenced the man to 70 years in prison with no parole possible for at least 20 years.
“Here you have a 12-guage shotgun, not to protect your family but to go after someone. And go after someone you did,” District Judge Ed McLean said sternly in sentencing Markus Kaarma for deliberate homicide in the April 27 killing of 17-year-old Diren Dede of Hamburg, Germany.
“You pose too great a risk to society to be anywhere else but the Montana State Prison,” McLean said. “Good luck to you, son.”
Kaarma’s case was closely followed in Germany and brought scrutiny in the U.S. to Montana’s “stand your ground” law that allows the use of force to protect life and property. At least 30 U.S. states have such laws.
In sentencing Kaarma, the judge made clear there are strict limits to residents’ rights to use force while claiming self-defense.
At trial, prosecutors argued Kaarma was intent on luring an intruder into his garage after it was burglarized at least once before the shooting. Three witnesses testified they heard Kaarma say he’d been waiting up nights to shoot an intruder.
The night of the shooting, Kaarma left his garage door partially open and placed a purse inside. Alerted by a motion detector, he entered the darkened garage and fired four shotgun blasts, pausing between the third and fourth shots, witnesses testified.
Dede, an exchange student at Missoula’s Big Sky High School, was unarmed.
Kaarma’s lawyers argued he feared for his life, didn’t know if the intruder was armed, and was on edge because of the earlier burglary. Kaarma was convicted in December, and he had faced a maximum prison term of 100 years.
“It is justice,” Dede’s father, Celal Dede, said after the sentence. But he added: “I am not happy. My son is dead.”
