A 38-year-old Colorado man was sentenced Tuesday to three years probation for stealing night vision goggles worth more than $40,000 from a Minden military force protection company.
District Judge Dave Gamble ordered Charles Day to pay restitution and extradition charges totaling nearly $30,000 at $250 a month.
Day entered an Alford plea Jan. 23 to attempted grand larceny, a gross misdemeanor. Day said he wasn't admitting the allegation, but was afraid if he went to trial, he would be convicted of more serious offenses.
After repeated questioning Tuesday, Gamble said he was satisfied that Day took responsibility for the theft.
"I came in here fully intending for you to go through that door," Gamble said, indicating the exit that leads to Douglas County Jail.
"I put people on probation to prove the truth of what they tell me here," he said.
He suspended a 12-month sentence in jail and ordered Day to complete substance abuse treatment and abstain from alcohol and drugs. He is subject to random search and seizure for controlled substances and stolen property.
The items were reported stolen last March from SOC-SMG Inc., a company that trains security personnel for high-risk duty in Iraq and other locations.
Day, a former SOC-SMG Inc. employee, said security was poor at the location.
"They had a very relaxed, poor security system," Day said. "There was a fence that could be climbed and the safe was left unlocked."
Day was one of two employees who had access to the vault where the goggles were stored. Day resigned the day after the thefts were discovered and moved to Colorado.
-- A day before her trial was to begin on battery causing substantial bodily harm, a 27-year-old South Lake Tahoe woman pleaded no contest to a conspiracy charge in connection with an incident which left her ex-boyfriend with permanent eye damage.
Kristin Olsen said she and the 55-year-old victim had been drinking at dinner and when they returned to his residence in Gardnerville, he tried to force her out the door.
"Arms were flailing and his eye got hit," she said.
She finally admitted that she was responsible for the injury.
"It was a violent struggle and his eye got hit by me," Olsen said.
In exchange for her guilty plea, the District Attorney's Office amended the charge to conspiracy to commit battery with substantial bodily harm, a gross misdemeanor.
Gamble set sentencing for April 24. Olsen faces up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine plus restitution.
