Man who beat victim with 8-pound sledgehammer and crammed body into plastic tote inside nurse's garage heads to prison

Inset: Keenan Wegener (Facebook). Background: The Anchorage Police Department (Google Maps).

A 44-year-old man in Alaska will likely spend the rest of his life in prison for killing another man with a metal sledgehammer before standing on the victim's neck and chest so he could stuff the body into a plastic tote.

Anchorage Superior Judge Peter Ramgren on Friday ordered Adam Darius Pringle to serve 55 years in a state correctional facility for the 2022 slaying of 27-year-old Keenan Wegener. Ramgren handed down the sentence after a jury found Pringle guilty on one count each of second-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with the killing, authorities announced.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Pringle's co-defendant, Daniel Alex Rocero, was found guilty on charges of murder, manslaughter, and tampering with evidence.

According to a news release from the Alaska Department of Law, prosecutors presented evidence showing that Pringle on March 18, 2022, "beat Wegener with an 8-pound metal sledgehammer" then "stood on Wegener's neck and chest" to stuff the body into a plastic tote.

A subsequent autopsy determined that Wegener died from a combination of asphyxia and blunt force trauma.

The Alaska Pretrial Services Division discovered Wegener's body two days after the March 2022 killing, when officers were investigating the apparent lack of movement from his ankle monitor, Anchorage NBC affiliate KTUU reported. Using his ankle monitor to track him, officers soon located Wegener's body in the garage of a home owned by a nurse.

In a resulting investigation, the owner told police that two days earlier, Rocero and Pringle had confronted the victim about an incident. The woman said the three went downstairs, "and she heard loud yelling and arguing, and she pounded on the wall for them [to] quiet down," according to a probable cause affidavit.

At some point, the woman told police, Pringle and Rocero came upstairs. The two men were arguing about what to do with Wegener, she said. Pringle allegedly said he knocked Wegener out — and asked the woman to render medical aid because she is a nurse. Rocero allegedly said that Wegener was not breathing and said they should call 911. Pringle then allegedly countered and said Wegener was breathing — and would be "all right."

Apparently, neither option was taken. The woman said she never even went downstairs. When relaying this story to police, she "expressed extreme fear" of Rocero and Pringle and indicated that "she was in fear of her life if they found out that she spoke with police."

The owner later picked the men out of a police lineup, and both were indicted for Wegener's murder on March 31, 2022.

Ramgren sentenced Rocero in September 2023 to 60 years, with 10 years suspended, leaving 50 years to serve for the homicide convictions, plus two additional years for tampering with evidence, according to the Department of Law.