Bonners Ferry teen gets a chance after burglary |
| September 13, 2011 |
|
Caleb U. Perez, 19, Bonners Ferry, has five
years to prove he deserves a second chance, with
the threat of up to six years in the Idaho State
Prison hanging over his head after he pled
guilty to burglary. According to the court record, sometime between May 12 and 13, Perez stopped by Sharon's Country Store and The Bread Basket just north of Three Mile, found an unlocked door, and entered the side-by-side businesses. He went to the cash registers, broke into both of them, and took what they contained. For that, he was initially charged with two felony counts of burglary and two misdemeanor counts of malicious injury to property for breaking the cash registers. The record gives no indication of how he was identified as the culprit, but Perez confessed to a sheriff's investigator that he'd committed the crime, and admitted to taking around $1,500 from the businesses. In a plea deal that spares him prison time but requires that he gain treatment for the drug and alcohol addictions that he said led him to commit the crimes, he pled guilty to one count of burglary and one count of malicious injury to property. Last week, Judge Steven Verby accepted that plea deal, sentencing Perez to two years in prison fixed, four years indeterminate on the burglary charge, suspended, and 90 days in the county jail, which he must serve. In addition, he must pay both business owners a total of $4,160.74 in restitution, $525.50 in court costs and a $62.50 fine. On the misdemeanor, he will have to serve two years' unsupervised probation, on the felony, five, but supervised, and not beginning until after he completes a specific and demanding drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. If he fails either, he'll spend considerable time return addressing letters home from an Idaho prison cell. |