By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

NEOSHO, Mo. — A gunman who killed three people in a church shooting two years ago has accepted a plea deal that will lock him up in prison for the rest of his life, the Newton County prosecutor confirmed Thursday.

Eiken Elam Saimon, 54, is scheduled to appear today at a 9:45 a.m. hearing in Newton County Circuit Court in Neosho.

Prosecutor Jake Skouby said Saimon has agreed to plead guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of first-degree assault in the shooting at the First Congregational Church in downtown Neosho on Aug. 12, 2007. Four people were wounded in the shooting spree.

Saimon also will plead guilty to charges of statutory rape and statutory sodomy for a sexual assault on a 14-year-old girl two days before the church shootings, Skouby said.

“I’ve been given assurances by the defense that that’s what will happen,” Skouby said Thursday.

He said the agreement calls for Saimon to be assessed three life sentences without parole, four 30-year sentences for the assaults and two seven-year sentences for the sex offenses. All the sentences will run consecutively, he said.

Saimon escapes a possible death sentence through the plea agreement.

The prosecutor’s office filed a notice in April of last year of aggravating circumstances in the case required to seek the death penalty in Missouri. The two aggravating circumstances cited in the notice were that the church shooting involved multiple victims and was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman.”

Three leaders of a Micronesian congregation who held services in the church after regular services on Sundays were killed in the shooting spree: Pastor Kernel Rehobson, 43; his uncle, Intenson Rehobson, 44; and Kuhpes Jesse Ikosia, 53, all of Goodman. The four wounded were: Jim M. Handy, 32, and Kendey Handy, 40, both of Joplin; Melihna Tarra, 77, of Rogers, Ark.; and Dahnny Jack, 33, of Neosho.

Skouby said the plea agreement was offered to the defendant only after consulting the families of the victims. He said family members were unanimous in wanting to see the case concluded without having to go to trial and without an imposition of the death penalty.

“One of them told me they do not have the death penalty in their culture, and they did not want it here,” Skouby said.

The case had been set to go to trial in June on a change of venue to Greene County. Saimon has been held without bond at the Newton County Jail since the church shooting.

Saimon, a native of the Micronesian island of Pohnpei, walked into the church with a semiautomatic pistol and a .22-caliber handgun, and opened fire. Following an initial deadly salvo, he held about 20 church members hostage in the church sanctuary and threatened to kill one every 30 minutes.