OMAHA, Neb. (KETV) — The man found not responsible for killing a Creighton baseball administrator by reason of insanity was sentenced to prison for a separate charge.
Ladell Thornton will serve 47 to 50 years for possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. He received credit for 1,424 days served.
Thornton, who pleaded no contest to the charge in May, will serve the sentence after he is released from the Lincoln Regional Center.
“If there ever comes a time when the judge feels like he should be released from the regional center, he’ll serve his 47 to 50 years,” Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said.
He will have competency hearings annually in the murder case to determine if he is no longer a danger to others.
“For him to get out of the Lincoln Regional Center, he would have to found to not be dangerous anymore, and what he did — I don’t know how they can ever overcome that,” Kleine said.
He was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Chris Gradoville, the former Creighton baseball standout who was the university’s director of baseball operations at the time of his death in 2021. In May, Thornton was found not responsible by reason of insanity.
Investigators alleged that in September 2021, Thornton fired more than 20 shots at Gradoville as Gradoville arrived at a home near 61st and Pratt. Thornton was a tenant of the home, and Gradoville was there to perform maintenance on behalf of the homeowner.
Prosecutors said three doctors agreed Thornton did not understand his actions at the time of the shooting.
Thornton did not know that he had a mental illness, but was suffering from paranoid delusions, according to prosecutors.
Kleine said Gradoville’s homicide led them to this case.
“The police did a great job due looking to the casings that were found at the scene of the homicide of Chris Gradoville,” Kleine said. “We got this other report six months earlier where (Thornton) was involved in some gunplay.”
Court documents report that in April 2021, Thornton told investigators that people in a car began to shoot at him.
At the time, he told investigators he did not fire back.
“There were casings that were found on his front windshield, which would have been from the gun fired from his car. Those casings matched the casings found from the Chris Gradoville homicide, which is how we proved this case,” Kleine said.
Prosecutors said that he was not competent for this case, but eventually became competent and now knows that the voices he heard were not real.
“It was a really brilliant move for Don to that, do that in the first place, because most prosecutors would have thought, ‘We have a homicide charge, why would we bother with a gun charge?'” Chief Deputy Douglas County Attorney Brenda Beadle said. “Had he not had that, we wouldn’t have had the outcome that we have today. I am very proud of our office and Don for doing that…”