MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — An Inwood man learned his fate after pleading no contest in the shooting death of a man last year.
Michael Allen Taylor, 40, entered the plea last Tuesday to the felony offenses of second degree murder and use of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to an aggregate 50 years in prison.
Taylor shot and killed for the shooting death of John Offenstein, who had offered Taylor a place to stay when he became homeless.
Prosecuting Attorney Joe Kinser said it would have been difficult to prove first degree murder because they still don’t know why he did it.
“When you need to prove something like, ‘was there premeditation and deliberation or was this something that kind of happened spontaneously’ not knowing why it happened cuts into that and makes that really difficult,” Kinser said. “That was part of the plea negotiations.”
Kinser said Taylor shot Offenstein 27 times.
The Berkeley County Grand Jury also handed up indictments in recent days.
Among the information, which you can read at Panhandle News Network – dot -com, are the updated charges against a Martinsburg janitor who was found hiding in a girls’ locker room during a game.
William Howard Shoup, 25, of Martinsburg, was charged with 13 counts of Attempted Criminal Invasion of Privacy, thirteen counts of Harassment, and two counts of Possession of a Deadly Weapon on Premises of an Educational Facility. The charges he was indicted for differ from the initial charges Shoup faced, that because investigators at the time had not processed Shoup’s phone when the initial charges were made.