Matthew Schade pleads guilty

CENTER, Neb. — Matthew Schade will not spend any additional time in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

On Tuesday, the 26-year-old pleaded guilty to the weapons charge as part of a plea bargain.

Schade then was sentenced by Knox County District Court Judge James Kube to 12 to 18 months in prison, but the term will be served at the same time as his other sentence.

In June, Schade received to an 18- to 36-month prison term for violating his probation in Pierce, Antelope and Knox Counties.

Under the state’s sentencing guidelines, Schade will have to serve at least nine months but probably no more than 18 months on all charges.

Matthew and Rowena Schade made national headlines in late March and early April when they fled from their rural Creighton home and spent almost three weeks on the lam, including camping in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Along the way, they were accused of abandoning their car and stealing a Silver City, S.D., firetruck and driving it back to Nebraska.

The couple said they feared that officials from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services were going to take away their two children. They were arrested outside a cabin in Knox County in early April.

Schade appeared in court Tuesday with his defense attorney, Rodney Smith.

Mike Long, the Antelope County attorney who was appointed a special prosecutor in the case, said he was disappointed that the judge did not order the weapons sentence to be served after the probation violation sentence.

“I feel that it is a separate offense from the burglaries that occurred in 2004,” Long said. “There’s only a remote connection from the sole fact that he possessed the firearms from those 2004 burglaries.”

At the time of the family’s disappearance, Schade had been on probation for burglaries in Plainview and Oakdale.

Schade still has charges pending against him in South Dakota, including two counts of burglary and charges of felony theft and misdemeanor theft. He will be taken to South Dakota for those court proceedings and will receive credit toward his Nebraska sentence while in South Dakota.

Then, if there is any time left on his Nebraska sentences, he will be returned to the state to finish his prison term before serving any South Dakota sentence he might receive.

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