A Marion man accused of killing a police officer over 1,500 miles away is set to spend the rest of his life in federal prison.

There are more than 1,700 miles separating Dillon County from New Mexico’s capital city, but officials in both communities have been side-by-side for nearly a year in the wake of a brutal cross-country crime spree that took the lives of first responders in both.

A South Carolina man has pleaded guilty to charges that he gunned down a New Mexico state police officer who had stopped to help him.