READING — A 24-year-old man who took part in the fatal beating of a university student was sentenced Monday to 20 to 40 years in prison.

Timothy Gearhart of Allentown was one of three men charged with murder in the death of 19-year-old Kyle Quinn, a Kutztown University sophomore. Quinn was attacked at random after the three men left a bar looking for someone to beat up, police said.

The Sept. 7 killing was Kutztown's first homicide since 1982 and only the third since 1968, officials said.

Quinn, 19, was from the Philadelphia suburb of Warminster. More than 40 friends and family were in the courtroom and several of them read statements, which Yatron ordered Gearhart to bring to prison with him.

Gearhart apologized to Quinn's family.

"Please know that I've thought of your son every day and will every day of my life," he said to Quinn's parents. "

His public defender had been seeking a 10- to 20-year prison sentence Gearhart.

Gearhart was initially charged with first-degree murder, but prosecutors agreed to drop the most serious count when he pleaded guilty Aug. 6 to third-degree murder.