Elizabethtown, N.Y. ? A man already convicted in his stepuncle’s murder was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison for killing a 19-year-old Quebec man and stealing his car.

Ronald J. Caruso, 20, pleaded guilty on May 19 to first-degree murder and first-degree robbery. He shot Luke Leborgne of Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, Quebec, in the head on Aug. 30, 2001, at a rest area on the Interstate 87 Northway, 115 miles north of Albany.

An Army deserter from Fort Riley, Kan., Caruso killed his stepuncle, 30-year-old Gary Kays, in Kays’ home and stole a relative’s car in Delaware, Sullivan County, two days before he killed Leborgne. Caruso is appealing his life-without-parole prison sentence in that case.

“I hope he spends the rest of his life in jail,” said Leborgne’s mother, Beverly Cross, of Kahnawake, during the sentencing in front of more than two dozen of her relatives and friends. “My son had his whole life ahead of him.”

Caruso told the court, “There’s nothing I can say to take back what I’ve done. I’m really sorry for what I did. I did not mean to hurt you guys.”