Sentencing delayed for 'Dances With Wolves' actor convicted of sexual assault

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The sentencing for Nathan Chasing Horse following his conviction for sexual assault of Indigenous women and girls has been delayed by a week.

The sentencing was scheduled to take place Wednesday, but Judge Jessica Peterson agreed to move the hearing to March 18. It will bring to a close a case that sent shock waves through Indian Country.

The sentencing of the “Dances With Wolves” actor comes about a month after a Nevada jury convicted him on 13 of the 21 charges he faced. Most related to his conduct with a victim who was 14 when he began assaulting her. Chasing Horse was acquitted of some sexual assault charges.

He faces a minimum of 25 years in prison.

Following the trial, Chasing Horse’s attorney Craig Mueller filed a motion for a new trial, arguing a witness was not qualified to talk about grooming and that the statute of limitations had expired. That motion was denied.

The sentencing wraps a yearslong effort to prosecute the former actor after he was first arrested and indicted in 2023. That initial arrest reverberated around Indian Country, with law enforcement in other states and Canada following up with more criminal charges.

The British Columbia Prosecution Service said Chasing Horse was charged with sexual assault in February 2023, though the date of the alleged offense took place in September 2018 near Keremeos, a village about four hours east of Vancouver. In November 2023, the case paused due to Chasing Horse’s charges in the United States, but resumed the following year.

After all of Chasing Horse’s appeals have been exhausted, British Columbia prosecutors will assess next steps, Damienne Darby, communications counsel for the British Columbia Prosecution Service, said in an email Tuesday.

The Tsuut’ina Nation Police Service in Alberta said in a statement following Chasing Horse’s conviction that a warrant remains outstanding against him and said that it is in contact with the Alberta Crown Prosecutors Office regarding the warrant.

Nevada prosecutors said Chasing Horse used his reputation as a Lakota medicine man to prey on Indigenous women and girls.

Deputy District Attorney Bianca Pucci told the jury that for almost 20 years, Chasing Horse “spun a web of abuse” that ensnared many women.

Jurors heard from three women who said Chasing Horse sexually assaulted them. The jury returned guilty verdicts on some charges related to all three.

Following his appearance as Smiles a Lot in Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning film “Dances With Wolves,” Chasing Horse, born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, traveled across Indian Country to attend powwows and perform healing ceremonies.

Multiple victims described how they participated in his ceremonies or went to Chasing Horse for medical help.

The main accuser was 14 in 2012 when Chasing Horse allegedly told her the spirits wanted her to give up her virginity to save her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer. He then sexually assaulted her and told her that if she told anyone, her mother would die, according to Pucci. The sexual assaults continued for years, Pucci said.

He denied the allegations and his attorney questioned the main accuser’s credibility, calling her a “scorned woman.”

FILE - Nathan Chasing Horse appears in court for his trial on charges of sexually abusing Indigenous women and girls, Jan. 20, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A body found in Tampa Bay has been identified as the second missing University of South Florida doctoral student from Bangladesh, a sheriff said Friday.

Nahida Bristy’s remains were found Sunday in a garbage bag discovered by a kayaker whose fishing line got snagged, said Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister. The positive identification on the badly decomposed body was eventually made using DNA and dental records, he said.

The body of her friend, fellow USF doctoral student Zamil Limon, was in another garbage bag that was found two days before that on a bridge over the bay. Limon’s roommate, Hisham Saleh Abugharbeih, 26, was taken into custody the same day and faces two charges of first-degree murder. He's been held in jail since then on no bond.

Chronister said the suspect showed no emotion when investigators presented him with details of the killings.

“He was nonreactive,” Chronister said. “He was callous and showed no emotion when we showed him the information we had.”

The two students were murdered around the same time and place, though detectives need to investigate further before they can decide that conclusively, the sheriff said.

The sheriff said detectives didn’t yet know a motive for the killings.

“I hope we find that out,” Chronister said.

Chronister said content on Abugharbieh’s phone had been erased, but a forensic examination revealed disturbing searches in the days before April 16, when Bristy and Limon went missing. The searches included phrases like, “Can a knife penetrate a skull?" and “Can a neighbor hear a gunshot?”

The suspect had also purchased Lysol wipes and heavy duty contractor-grade trash bags and other equipment, he said.

“This was calculating. That’s what makes this so premeditated,” Chronister said.

A search of the apartment that Abugharbieh and Limon shared with a third roommate showed large traces of blood in the kitchen, leading down the hall to Abugharbieh’s room and inside his room, the sheriff said.

The luminol-based spray even revealed blood in the shape of a human body curled up in the fetal position, next to Abugharbieh’s bed, he said.

Limon was last seen at the off-campus apartment complex where he lived with Abugharbieh, and Bristy at a campus science building on that same day. Limon was studying geography, environmental science and policy, and Bristy was studying chemical engineering. Abugharbieh had dropped out of the university.

Reached by email earlier this week, Jennifer Spradley, an attorney in the public defender’s office in Tampa, said the office wouldn’t comment on Abugharbieh’s case.

Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho contributed to this report.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

Detectives with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office join an investigation inside the Lake Forest subdivision of Tampa, Fla., on Friday, April 24, 2026, where authorities said a man was taken into custody after barricading himself inside a home, in connection to the search for two missing University of South Florida graduate students. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)