RENO, Nev. (AP) - A 39-year old man who pleaded guilty to assaulting a woman he strangled on a tribal reservation northeast of Reno last year has been sentenced to two and one-half years in prison.
Wakinyan Blindman admitted last July he attacked the woman on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s lands and pleaded guilty in November to one count of assault of an intimate partner by strangulation or suffocation within Indian Country, U.S Attorney Nicholas Trutanich said Tuesday.
Blindman hit the woman with a closed fist, strangled her and suffocated her by shoving dirt and weeds into her mouth. She suffered serious bodily injury during the assault.
U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks sentenced Blindman in federal court in Reno, prosecutors said.
Trutanich and FBI Special Agent Aaron Rouse said the case was brought as part of Project Veronica, an initiative launched by the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the district of Nevada.
Project Veronica is named in honor of a local victim of domestic violence named Veronica Caldwell. In 2015, Caldwell lost her life at the hands of her husband, who also shot and killed Veronica’s daughter Yvonne and her daughter’s boyfriend, they said.
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