Marie Coker shows photos of her sister, Nadia Iverson, a 1995 graduate of Youngsville High School who was killed in 1997 by Arthur Sewall, during sentencing proceedings Tuesday in Clark County, Nevada. Sewall was sentenced to serve 6 to 15 years in state prison. Photo from video

The man who killed Nadia Iverson will spend years in a Nevada state prison.

Arthur J. Sewall was sentenced Tuesday by 8th Judicial District of Nevada Judge Carli Kierny.

He will spend six to 15 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon for killing Iverson in May 1997. He was credited with 1,811 days served — meaning he will be eligible for parole in about two years.

Iverson was a 1995 graduate of Youngsville High School.

She left for Las Vegas two years later.

Within months, she was dead.

Sewall was arrested in 2018 after DNA evidence linked him to Iverson’s death. He had been a Las Vegas police officer shortly before killing Iverson.

He entered a negotiated guilty plea in November.

Sewall declined an opportunity to address the court on Tuesday.

Iverson’s family did not. There were several family members and friends in court, some wearing #justice4nadia shirts and wristbandds. There were others attending online. Nadia’s sister, Marie Coker, gave an emotional impact statement.

“I am here to give voice for my sister,” Coker said. “To face her killer. To speak my pain.”

“I’ll never forget that day,” she said. “It was sunny, birds were chirping” there was laughter in the house.

“That all changed with a knock at the door,” as police delivered the news of her sister’s death, she said. “The world as we knew it was over.”

“I couldn’t breathe,” Coker said. “I wanted to hide.”

“When I turned to see my mother, I saw such pain in her face,” she said. “I heard the agony in her plea as a mother – ‘Please, don’t let this be true.'”

She said the whole family “succumbed to grief and rage.”

The emotions were overwhelming.

“The pain in my family’s eyes… has stuck with me my whole life,” she said.

“The reality I had to face was my family was gone,” Coker said. “Her death killed my family. Mr. Sewall took who we once were along with her.”

She ran from that pain.

“My family could not help me because they did not know how to help themselves,” Coker said. “I had to leave that small town.”

“I ran from my pain,” she said. “I even ran from my family.

No matter how far I ran, I could not outrun this agony.”

She was also caught in the grips of fear. Fear that the faceless man who killed her sister could find her and do the same.

“I was terrified,” she said. “Fear took over my life.”

“Since Mr. Sewall’s arrest in 2018, I have finally been able to sleep,” she said.

“I looked up to my sister, Nadia,” she said. “Now, my sister is gone forever. My sister will never be part of my life again.”

“Nadia didn’t get to choose,” Coker said. “He chose for her.”

“My sister was my best friend,” Christian Iverson said. “When she was taken from me, from her family, from her community… it changed my whole world.”

He said her violent death introduced “grief and torment in my life.”

He spoke about the impact Sewall’s actions had upon him.

“Mr. Sewall has rented space in my mind and taken me to some dark places,” Iverson said. “I feel he should have never been given a plea deal. I am here to see justice be served to a man who thought he could be judge.”

He requested a sentence at the high end of the sentencing grid “I will never forget,” he said.

Kierny thanked Iverson for his statement giving her a sense of the level of impact that remains among family members 25 years after Nadia’s death. “Thank you for reminding me of that.”

“I have mixed emotions today,” Coker said. “A part of me is thankful for this day to have finally arrived so I can face the man who was the last person to see my sister alive.”

“Another part of me is filled with intense grief,” she said.

Previously, Coker described the plea agreement as “very frustrating.”

“In two years he will go before the parole board requesting release,” she said in November. “I will be there. I will fight for every minute for the next 15 full years for my sister.”

“There will never be enough time served,” she said then. “She deserved to live. She deserved a life.”

“Mr. Sewall created his own consequences,” Coker said on Tuesday. “He is an evil person who should not be allowed to walk free ever again.”

“I hope this conviction will give your family some peace,” Kierny said.

She apologized that it took 26 years for that conviction and sentencing to take place.

To Sewall, she said, “I hope that you take with you the huge impact and loss that this family has suffered as a result of your actions.”

Coker showed several pictures of Nadia to the court throughout her statement. The last was one of her at her sister’s grave.

“I wish I could hear her voice… see her face… and hug her,” she said. “The time I get with her now is on a grassy spot on top of a hill.”

“It’s time for justice,” Coker said. “It’s time for healing. It’s time for my sister’s death not to be in vain.”

And to “finally let her rest in peace.”