A former LaPorte County Sheriff’s Deputy will likely spend the rest of his life in prison for making and distributing child pornography.
On Wednesday U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty sentenced 46-year-old Neil Lachmund to 54 years in prison, meaning he would be 100 when he’s released.
Lachmund, of Michigan City, pleaded guilty to making pornographic images with minors and distributing them. He victimized three minors over a 10-year period, from 2015 to March of this year. He abused two of the victims while he was a LaPorte County Sheriff’s Deputy, before he resigned in 2018 after being charged with drunken driving for a second time.
Court records show Lachmund asked the judge to impose a sentence of just 30 years, which is what the sentencing guidelines called for. His attorney David Payne wrote that he’s in active methamphetamine addiction and has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from being sexually abused as a child.
But in a press release, Acting U.S. Attorney M. Scott Proctor said “By repeatedly preying on those least able to protect themselves, he betrayed the principles to which he swore in the most vile and loathsome manner imaginable.”
