Teen sentenced to 6-12 years for 2014 Valentine’s beating
A Connellsville teen was led to the Fayette County Prison in handcuffs immediately following his sentencing hearing Tuesday before Fayette County Judge Steve P. Leskinen for the robbery and assault of an elderly man two years ago.
Duston Wiggins, 18, accepted a plea agreement calling for six to 12 years in prison for his role in the assault on 81-year-old Caesar Gasperi on Feb. 14, 2014.
Wiggins, represented by attorney William Diffenderfer, earlier this year entered guilty pleas to 19 counts, including robbery, burglary, theft, simple assault, reckless endangerment, conspiracy to commit each. He and two other teens had entered the home of Gasperi and his daughter Lisa to get money. The teens were armed with pellet guns and one of them struck Caesar Gasperi in the head with the metal gun, causing several cuts to the elderly man’s head.
Caesar Gasperi died earlier this year. His daughter Lisa Gasperi presented a victim impact statement prior to the sentencing, saying she regretted that her father did not live to see justice served.
“I watched Duston Wiggins beat my frail, defenseless, 81-year-old father with a gun and a kitchen chair as he was lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of his own blood. I can describe his assault on my father in no way other than brutal, vicious, animalistic and sadistic,” Lisa Gasperi stated.
Gasperi said her father has been in and out of the hospital over the past two years since the attack, and that she has had difficulty sleeping and is unable to trust people like she used to.
“Fortunately this monster made the mistake of attacking in the snow and his footprints betrayed him and give him away,” Gasperi said. “Even though this monster didn’t take my father’s life that specific night, he took something incredibly precious from him and I and my family, and that is our sense of safety in our home and in some way, our innocence.”
Leskinen had both Gasperi’s statement, and the pre-sentencing report including letters of support for Wiggins. Those statements were not read in the open court.
“In this case, the victim impact and support for the defendant are as much at odds as anything I’ve seen in 38 years in this profession,” Leskinen said. “Listening to Miss Gasperi’s statement, it’s hard to reconcile the two people represented in those reports.”
Leskinen noted prior to the sentencing that it would be a difficult sentence to appeal unless Wiggins could show that he did not enter into the plea agreement voluntarily.