NEW PORT RICHEY - A Pasco County jury deliberated for only 25 minutes Thursday before finding Robert E. Conner guilty of attacking 13-year-old Carolina McDonald while she waited for her school bus.
McDonald was a student at Hudson Middle School on Feb. 16, 1999, the day of the incident. She typically waited for her bus at Colony and Fairwinds roads.
That day, the Hudson man drove by in his 1984 Plymouth Voyager about 7 a.m. He then made a U-turn on a nearby street.
As he drove by McDonald the second time, Conner stopped and got out of his car wearing pantyhose over his head. He pushed McDonald to the ground, put a stocking around her neck and choked her for five or six seconds.
Conner ran back to his van and drove away.
McDonald wasn't hurt.
Conner, then 23, told investigators he was venting anger because he was "struggling to pay bills, depressed and having problems in general."
In 2000, Conner was convicted of attempted murder and kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison. Last year, however, a judge overturned the conviction, ruling Conner's original trial lawyer failed to advise him that a kidnapping charge was punishable by a life sentence.
A jury of three men and three women found Conner guilty of the same charges just before 8 p.m. Thursday. He will be resentenced Jan. 4 and again faces a life sentence.
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