One of two young men who crawled through the doggie door of a Manheim Township home last year to rob and terrorized the occupants was sentenced this morning to 11 and a half to 23 years in state prison.

Manuel Rafael Fisher, 18, of 615 Eagles View, cried as Lancaster County Judge Margaret C. Miller imposed the sentence for robbery, conspiracy, burglary and three counts of unlawful restraint. Fisher's co-defendant, Jorge Chavez of Columbia, will be sentenced at a later date.

The victims, Larry and Gail Stender, told the judge they still suffer from the feelings of helplessness and terror they experienced on the morning of March 26, 2007, as the robbers threatened to kill them and bound them with duct tape before going in search of their teenage daughter.

"I absolutely thought I was going to be murdered along with my husband and daughter," Mrs. Stender, of Stonehenge Drive, told the judge.

Stender told Miller that the memory of lying bound and face down in his bed, helpless to protect his daughter, "spooks me daily." 

Luckily, the teenager had called 911 from a cell phone before Fisher kicked in the girl's bedroom door and dragged her down to her parents' room, where she also was bound, Miller was told. Police soon arrived and surrounded the house, arresting the pair.

District Attorney Craig Stedman, in a dramatic plea for a stiff sentence, said this case was the worse crime he'd seen that did not end in in death.

"Can anybody believe this isn't a movie? It isn't," Stedman said.

Whatever the sentence imposed on Fisher, Stedman told the judge, the events of that morning will haunt the Stenders for the rest of their lives.