Man to serve 16 years for stabbing at church on reservation

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – A South Carolina man has been sentenced to 16 years in federal prison for stabbing a companion to death inside a church on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina.

Local news outlets report Forest Dakota Hill of Easley, South Carolina, was sentenced Tuesday. He pleaded guilty in April to second-degree murder.

Court records and testimony showed Hill and two other people drove to the Smokemount Baptist Church in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in March 2015.

While there, Hill stabbed one of the men with him, 25-year-old Tyler Gaddis of Whittier, to death in what court records say was "an unprovoked attack."