Ohio man gets 50 years for wife's slaying in Richmond

RICHMOND, Ind. — An Ohio man who fatally shot his wife in her mother's Richmond home was sentenced this week to 50 years in prison.

Vincent Joel Allen Hoffman, 26, had pleaded guilty to murder in Wayne Circuit Court, He was sentenced Monday by Judge April Drake.

According to investigators with the Richmond Police Department, Hoffman came to Wayne County on Dec. 3, 2021, not long after his 34-year-old wife, Jessica, had left their home in Riverside, Ohio — a Dayton suburb — to stay at her mother's home in Richmond.

Police said Hoffman kicked open the front door at his mother-in-law's trailer in a local mobile home park, found his wife in the residence and shot her twice — in the chest and in the head.

Jessica Hoffman died at the scene.

More: Document: Man said voices in his head told him to commit Richmond slaying

Interviewed by police the day after the homicide, Hoffman eventually admitted that he had killed his wife, responding to "voices in his head (that) were telling him to go shoot her," according to an affidavit.

The Ohio man also said he had been "up for a few days and doing cocaine."

He told detectives where they could find the handgun used in the slaying, which was recovered.

The Ohio man was given credit for 695 days already spent in the Wayne County jail.

In May 2019, Hoffman — formerly of Wayne County — was convicted of battery resulting in bodily injury and criminal recklessness, both in Wayne Superior Court 1.

In that case, he had been accused of Intentionally crashing his car into a vehicle occupied by his former girlfriend and her male acquaintance outside the Dollar General Store in Centerville.

Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Ohio man gets 50 years for wife's slaying in Richmond