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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA man who pleaded guilty to providing a handgun used to kill a Boone County sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced to 46 years in prison on drug and weapons charges.
A Boone County judge sentenced John Ball on Thursday to 30 years on five drug-related charges and 16 years on a charge of providing a firearm to an ineligible person. Ball, 24, was also sentenced to 2½ years on a previous meth conviction.
Ball pleaded guilty in September to the charges. Prosecutors agreed to drop a murder charge Ball had faced in the March 2018 killing of Boone County Sheriff’s Deputy Jacob Pickett.
Prosecutors said Ball gave Anthony Baumgardt of Lebanon a handgun before Pickett’s shooting despite knowing that Baumgardt wasn’t eligible to buy one. The 34-year-old deputy was shot while pursuing Baumgardt with his police dog. Pickett died three days later.
Baumgardt was sentenced to life in prison without parole in May after pleading guilty to murder in Pickett’s killing.
A third man charged in the deputy’s slaying, John Baldwin Jr., is scheduled to stand trial in April on murder and other charges.
Another woman, Dawn Love Rochon, was sentenced to 13 months in prison last July after she pleaded guilty to federal charges of making a false statement to purchase the gun.
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