Shotgun incident draws five-year prison term

A 19-year-old South Lake Tahoe man who walked through the Lake Tahoe casino core with a loaded shotgun was sentenced Monday to five years in Nevada State Prison.

Eric Zamudio pleaded guilty to battery with a deadly weapon stemming from a Feb. 22 confrontation between two groups of young men in a Stateline casino parking garage.

One of the young men held a stun gun to the neck of a friend of Zamudio's. After he was released, Zamudio discharged a shotgun which ricocheted off the wall and ceiling of the garage, striking the victim in the face with pellets.

Zamudio's lawyer, Tod Young, said the man wasn't injured seriously and refused medical treatment.

Zamudio also is subject to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold. He has been in Douglas County Jail on $75,000 bail.

District Judge Michael Gibbons told Zamudio he must serve a minimum of two years before he is eligible for parole.

"I'm sorry for what I did," Zamudio said. "I can't change it, but I am sorry about it."

A Los Angeles man who failed to show up for sentencing a year ago for his part in a March 2007 commercial break-in was sentenced Monday to six months in Douglas County Jail.

Juan Carlos Sanchez-Garcia, 37, admitted conspiracy to commit burglary in connection with a March 21, 2007, break-in of United Rentals of Gardnerville, but claimed he acted as the lookout.

Sanchez-Garcia was arrested after deputies responded to a burglary report. They found him alone inside the yard. Several dirt compactors had been taken from their sheds and had been dragged toward a hole in the fence.

No other suspects were prosecuted, and nothing was taken.

Sanchez-Garcia was to be sentenced last June, but failed to appear. He was arrested in March in Sacramento and returned to Douglas County.

District Judge Michael Gibbons rejected a recommendation that Sanchez-Garcia be sentenced to 90 days in jail.

"I thought it was too lenient then (a year ago), and it's more so now," Gibbons said.

Sanchez-Garcia also was ordered to pay $324.94 to bring him back from California.

A Carson City woman who paid more than $5,600 restitution months after she was placed on probation asked a judge Monday to reduce her felony offense to a gross misdemeanor so she could live with her boyfriend, a sheriff's deputy.

Lawyer Derrick Lopez said his client, Regina Hunsaker, 25, wanted to move back in with her boyfriend. Hunsaker also said a felony conviction would stand in the way of her hope to attend medical school.

"I have done everything in my power," she said. "It is my goal to further my education and become a doctor, and to return to my significant other."

Lopez said the deputy was told by his captain that he couldn't live with Hunsaker because she was a convicted felon.

She pleaded guilty last year to attempted theft, admitting she took several pairs of eyeglasses and sunglasses, and used customers' names to get prescriptions for herself while she worked for an eye doctor.

Gibbons denied her request to lower the offense to a gross misdemeanor, but he reduced her probation from five years to one year.

He told her she could renew the request when she completes probation.

Hunsaker said she borrowed the money from her uncle for the restitution and was paying it back.

"Probation is to determine if somebody can perform for a significant amount of time as a law-abiding citizen," Gibbons said. "Not enough time has passed. And she didn't earn the money herself, she borrowed it from a relative. She's well on her way to having it done, but she's not quite there yet."

Gibbons amended a requirement that Hunsaker abstain from alcohol to "not to drink to excess."

Hunsaker said she wasn't drinking, but wanted to be able to live with a relative who had alcohol in the home.