FORT WAYNE, Ind. — A Fort Wayne man who pleaded guilty to charges in the dismemberment of a 55-year-old man was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.
Jacob Carreon-Hamilton, 22, of Elkhart, pleaded guilty in July 2021 to assisting a criminal, abuse of a corpse and resisting law enforcement.
Under a plea deal, Carreon-Hamilton testified earlier this week in the trial of Mathew Cramer II, who was found guilty Wednesday of murder, abuse of a corpse, and resisting law enforcement in the killing of Shane Nguyen in April of 2021.
Cramer's sentencing is set for Nov. 28. The jury in his trial recommended he spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Nguyen was last seen on April 23 at around 3 p.m. His family reported him missing and a Silver Alert was declared just after midnight Sunday morning, nearly two days later.
Investigators believe Cramer slammed Nguyen's head to the ground, killing him in a storage unit.
Carreon-Hamilton used a cell phone to shoot video of Cramer hacking at Nguyen's body with a machete, and he admitted to helping dismember Nguyen's body, which was later found scattered in bags inside the victim's van on April 25, investigators said.
According to court documents, officers spotted Nguyen's van April 25 and tried to stop it, but it took off. Officers chased it until the driver got out and ran and the passenger jumped behind the wheel and sped away. Officers stopped the chase because of the high speeds. They later found the van after it crashed through a fence of a home. That's when they found Nguyen's dismembered body.
Nguyen's death was ruled a homicide by blunt force trauma to the head. Fort Wayne Police Sgt. Jeremy Webb called the killing "barbaric."
“It was brutal and extreme. It's not every day we come across cases of this butchery," Webb told WPTA.
