A court in Siberia has sentenced a local villager to 13 years in prison for a particularly gruesome murder of a man he had suspected of trying to steal his horse: He tied the victim to the horse and dragged him 350 meters along the ground.
The victim died of "traumatic shock" after his face and 65 percent of his body were scraped of skin, the Baikal region's Prosecutor's Office said in a statement Thursday, citing the court verdict, Interfax reported.
The defendant, a resident of the village of Shonoktui near the city of Borzya in southern Siberia, pleaded guilty to his role in last December's incident, but maintained that he was only guilty of manslaughter, claiming that he had not planned to kill his victim, the report said.
The court found him guilty of "murder with particular cruelty" and handed down a 13-year sentence, the report said.