Nevada man pleads guilty but mentally ill in trooper slaying July 27, 2021 GMT LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 67-year-old Nevada man pleaded guilty but mentally ill on Monday and will avoid a death penalty trial in the fatal ambush shooting of a veteran highway patrol trooper on a remote state highway in March 2020. John Leonard Dabritz, a former resident of the small White Pine County mining town of Ruth, is expected in September to face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing highway patrol Sgt. Ben Jenkins, 47. “The officer had come up to the side of the road, and I had shot him,” defendant Dabritz told White Pine County District Court Judge Steve Dobrescu, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported after a hearing that was livestreamed from court. “He was killed.”