Theopulus Gordon could have prevented the death of Eric Robinson last September, but he didn’t.FORT WAYNE – One night in October, Shannon Labrosse straddled her husband’s body while he was in bed and began striking him repeatedly in the head with a hammer, bruising his brain with each blow as she told him that he made her skin crawl.
Nearly three months later, all is apparently forgiven.
Having pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of battery as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Labrosse, 34, was sentenced Wednesday to one year in jail for the attack. She might serve as little as three months before her release, according to Allen Superior Court records.
That sentence is a steep drop from the initial punishment she faced in the days after the attack, and it’s because of her husband that the sentence became so light, according to the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office.
Prosecutors initially charged Labrosse with felony counts of aggravated battery, battery and criminal confinement and a misdemeanor count of interfering with the reporting of a crime. All told, those charges could have resulted in a sentence of more than 20 years in prison.
But then Labrosse’s 48-year-old husband, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, became uncooperative with investigators, according to a prosecutor’s spokeswoman. He told investigators that Labrosse’s attack was in self-defense.
According to a police report detailing the attack, Shannon Labrosse told police her husband “had gone crazy and had hit her and had tried to set the bed on fire.” She also said her husband had struck her with a flat-screen television just before he left, according to the report.
During the sentencing hearing, Labrosse’s husband asked the judge to either dismiss the charges against his wife or sentence her to time already served, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Instead, Labrosse received a year to be served at the Allen County Jail, with 90 days’ credit for time already served there while her case moved through the legal system.
She could ultimately serve about 90 more days. Indiana law gives inmates one day of credit for each day of good behavior, potentially cutting their sentences in half.
