Luka Wade Rasmussen, 19, was sentenced to 10 to 16 years after admitting he shot 16-year-old Riley Sears during a night of video games, marijuana and reckless gun handling.

CASPER, Wyo. — A Natrona County judge sentenced a 19-year-old Casper man to 10 to 16 years in prison after he admitted fatally shooting his 16-year-old friend during a night of playing Madden, smoking marijuana and handling a loaded gun inside a home on East 8th Street.

The sentence brings a central court fight to a close in a case that shocked Casper because it did not begin with a robbery, a chase or a long-running feud. Prosecutors said it began with teenagers hanging out, playing video games and treating firearms like props. Luka Wade Rasmussen pleaded guilty in October to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Riley Sears, who was killed Feb. 12, 2025. The sentencing hearing turned on how much weight the court should give Rasmussen’s age, his apology and his claim that the shooting was not intentional against the lasting harm to a family that lost a son in a setting that should have been ordinary and safe.

Investigators said the shooting happened at a Casper home in the 4000 block of East 8th Street. Riley, Rasmussen and another teenage boy had gathered there that night to smoke marijuana and play video games. Prosecutors said the mood inside the home was casual until Rasmussen began handling a pistol. Testimony described him pointing the gun’s laser during the gathering, even though prosecutors said he had already been warned before about aiming guns at other people. At some point, Riley was struck in the head by a fired round. According to the account presented in court, the shot came after Rasmussen pointed the weapon in Riley’s direction while the teens were still hanging out. The case then moved quickly from a teen gathering to a homicide investigation, with police recovering multiple firearms at the home and building a record of what happened in the room before the shot was fired.

The sentencing hearing gave the clearest public account yet of how prosecutors viewed Rasmussen’s conduct. Natrona County District Attorney Dan Itzen told the court the death was not a freak mechanical failure or a harmless mistake made in a vacuum. He argued that Rasmussen was using marijuana, pointing a gun fitted with a laser and treating the weapon as part of the evening’s bravado. In that telling, the shot that killed Riley was the predictable end of reckless choices, not an isolated accident divorced from the conduct that came before it. The prosecution asked the judge for a sentence in the 14- to 16-year range under the plea agreement. The defense, led by attorney Marty Scott, pressed for a shorter term and presented Rasmussen as a young man whose life had also been altered by the death of a friend. Rasmussen apologized in court and said he wanted to take full responsibility.

Riley’s family used the hearing to bring the case back to the human loss behind the charge. His father, Jacob Sears, described getting a call from an unknown number telling him his son had been shot. The courtroom record, as reported afterward, made clear that the family did not see the case as an ordinary teen mistake that should be softened by age alone. Riley was 16. He was not a stranger in the home and not a rival in a confrontation. He was a friend spending time with other teenagers. That mattered to the emotional weight of the case and to the prosecutor’s argument that a prison sentence had to reflect more than the label of involuntary manslaughter. The state’s position was that Riley died because the basic rules around loaded weapons were ignored again and again in the same room where the teens were passing time and playing Madden.

The context also shaped how the legal system handled the case from arrest to sentencing. Rasmussen was initially charged in 2025, and court records showed the case moved through the usual pretrial stages before ending in a guilty plea in October. Involuntary manslaughter in Wyoming carries serious penalties even when the state does not allege an intentional killing. That is because the offense turns on unlawful or reckless conduct that causes death. Here, prosecutors treated the pointing of the gun, the laser use, the marijuana use and the loaded chamber as central facts. Even without a murder charge, those details helped frame the shooting as the product of dangerous choices rather than bad luck. The judge’s final sentence did not match the very top end of the state’s request, but it still guaranteed Rasmussen would remain in prison for at least a decade before release.

The case drew wider attention because of how familiar its setting was. There was no remote campsite, no gang dispute and no unknown assailant. Instead, the facts described a private house, teenagers, video games and a gun that should not have been used as casually as a game controller. That contrast made the death of Riley Sears especially stark. It also gave the prosecutor a line of argument that was both simple and severe: when someone combines marijuana, horseplay and a loaded pistol, the risk is obvious long before the trigger is pulled. The defense urged the court not to define Rasmussen’s entire life by one night. The court, however, had to sentence him for what happened on that night, and the outcome reflected the judge’s view that the consequences were too grave for a short or treatment-only resolution.

The case now stands in its post-sentencing phase. Rasmussen has pleaded guilty, the court has imposed a prison term, and any next move would likely come through routine appellate review or later sentence-related filings rather than another trial. For Riley’s family, the public court process has produced a final prison term even though it cannot change the event that started the case.

Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.