The man who shot and killed a 73-year-old Lone Tree resident and fled the scene in a stolen truck last year will spend decades in prison after pleading guilty to murder earlier this week.
James Matthew Neal II, 24, accepted a plea deal Tuesday — including charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle theft and possession of a weapon by a previous offender — in connection with the November 2023 death of Michael Lohmeier.
On Thursday, Neal was sentenced to 48 years imprisonment for murder plus 12 years for the two other charges, all to run consecutively.
“This was a dangerous criminal who was released early on parole and went on to commit more crimes,” Corrie Caler, a senior deputy district attorney in the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, said in a statement. “I hope this lengthy prison sentence prevents the defendant from being able to victimize anyone else in the foreseeable future.”
Neal previously pleaded guilty to felony assault in 2020 and felony menacing in 2019.
Lone Tree police wrote in their own news release that Neal shot Lohmeier while the latter was sitting in his car in a retail parking lot. Neal then left in a stolen Ford F-150 pickup truck.
Footage from surveillance cameras in the area showed the stolen truck driving away from the murder scene “at a high rate of speed,” according to an arrest affidavit prepared by Lone Tree police. Additional footage showed Neal exiting the truck and changing his clothes inside a nearby department store.
About a week later, police caught up to the truck, driven by a female friend of Neal’s. The woman told police that Neal had described the murder to her, which Neal said took place after he asked Lohmeier whether he wanted to buy drugs.
Police said the woman told them Neal had “showed her his handgun and even pointed it at her.”
Neal was arrested by Wyoming state troopers two and a half weeks later after he was implicated in a string of vehicle break-ins and led troopers on a high-speed chase, according to Wyoming case documents. Neal was found with guns, electronics and other items that had been reported stolen from vehicles, troopers wrote.
Neal remained in jail after he was extradited to Douglas County and ordered held on a $20 million cash-only bond.
