A former Wendy’s shift manager who admitted to setting the U.S. 31-W ByPass location on fire was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison.

Warren Circuit Judge John Grise imposed the sentence on Michael Sheehan, 41, who had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree arson, third-degree burglary, first-degree criminal mischief, tampering with physical evidence and intimidating a participant in the legal process.

The Wendy’s where Sheehan worked was heavily damaged Feb. 21, 2024, by a fire, and the business would not re-open for nine months.

As the fire investigation progressed, authorities learned that money was missing from the safe in the business and a DVR box containing the store’s surveillance footage had been cut and removed.

A district manager for the business informed the Bowling Green Police Department that the store on the Bypass had been burglarized eight months before the fire, so she had the safe in the store re-keyed and issued new keys to four people, including Sheehan.

BGPD reviewed surveillance footage from the area around the time of the fire, and detectives found video of a man burglarizing the store in the early morning hours of Feb. 21, 2024.

Footage shows the burglar running across the street from Wendy’s and dropping a dark sweatshirt on the side of the Bypass that police later recovered.

“Shortly after (the suspect) flees the scene, the business was observed going up in smoke and the suspect continued fleeing,” BGPD Detective Jordan Tyree testified last year during a preliminary hearing in Warren District Court.

The Bowling Green Fire Department found some accelerant at the scene of the fire.

Police interviewed Sheehan’s then-girlfriend, who told detectives that Sheehan had acknowledged setting the fire in the back storage room of the business, according to court records.

“(Sheehan’s girlfriend) advised that Sheehan was ‘freaking out’ because the district manager … was about to review camera footage to see who had been stealing money from the store,” Tyree stated in an affidavit for a search warrant for two phones and an iPad seized from Sheehan’s residence. “(Sheehan’s girlfriend) advised that Sheehan had told her that he had to go get ‘the box’ and destroy any video evidence that may exist.”

Sheehan’s ex-girlfriend read from a short statement Tuesday at the sentencing hearing, saying that Sheehan subjected her to emotional and physical abuse, violated a protective order she took out against him and contacted her from jail to attempt to get her to recant her story to police.

Sheehan was previously convicted in 2004 in Utah in connection to a series of robberies there.

His attorney, Jeb Dennis of the Department of Public Advocacy, said in court Tuesday that Sheehan faces 18 years behind bars for violating parole in the Utah case, though it is not clear whether he would serve that time consecutively to or concurrently with the 20-year sentence.