A man who is scheduled for trial next month on charges of hiding his mother's body in a freezer so he could collect her monthly retirement checks was sentenced yesterday in Butler County Court in an unrelated firearms case.

Philip Faxon Royer Jr., 58, was ordered by Judge Timothy McCune to serve 12 months of county probation, perform 60 hours of community service and pay a $250 fine for the first-degree misdemeanor charge.

Mr. Royer was stopped on Sept. 25, 2006, for a traffic violation by a Cranberry police officer who had noticed a handgun in a homemade cardboard holster.

About a month earlier, Mr. Royer had been arrested by police for putting the body of his 90-year-old mother, Bobbie Royer, in a cooler, then hiding it in a basement freezer.

The body was discovered by authorities investigating why Mrs. Royer had stopped accepting the meals that were delivered to the home they shared.

He is charged with misdemeanor counts of abusing a corpse and criminal attempt at theft by deception.

His trial in that case is scheduled for July 21 before Judge McCune in Butler County Common Pleas Court.