Eighteen months after more than 30 cars were ransacked downtown, the assistant district attorney has brought charges against two Haines men, though the charges aren’t what some might have hoped.
Court documents filed Friday charged two Haines men, aged 19 and 20, for knowingly possessing stolen property. The two misdemeanor theft charges, one for each man, applied only to two of the items stolen during the June 2013 car break-in spree.
Assistant district attorney Amy Williams said Haines Borough Police Chief Bill Musser forwarded her additional felony charges, but Williams decided she couldn’t pursue them.
“I have charged the counts I believe I can prove without a reasonable doubt, which is my ethical responsibility,” Williams said.
Williams wouldn’t elaborate on why she chose not to pursue the additional felony charges, or comment on whether the evidence forwarded from the Haines Police department was too flimsy to support the charges in court.
“If it goes to trial, I want to be sure we have jurors that can have an open mind,” she said.
Musser said he didn’t know why Williams didn’t go with the heftier charges. “She made her decision without consulting me or providing any explanation for her action,” Musser said.
The defendants are not technically being charged with theft, but with knowingly possessing a stolen item.
The 20-year-old is charged with possessing a stolen Sony camera. The 19-year-old is charged with possessing a stolen GoPro camera. Both items are valued between $250 and $750.
According to court documents, both men made a mistake that led to their own undoing: they recorded images of themselves on the cameras that were later seized by police as evidence.
On March 5, a man asked police to return his Sony camera, which had been recovered on June 19 when officers searched a white Chevy Impala downtown and recovered nearly 100 stolen items. The same day police returned the camera, the owner came to the station and said there were photos of “an unknown male subject” on the camera that he hadn’t taken.
Police officers recognized the man in the photos as the 19-year-old. Date stamps on the photos confirmed they were taken over a seven-hour period on June 18, the night of the car break-ins.
On March 20, chief Musser met with another man whose stolen GoPro camera had been recovered by police. Musser asked the man to review the contents of the camera’s memory to see if there were any photos the man hadn’t taken.
The man noted there were three photos on the camera he didn’t recognize. They showed a young white man silhouetted in the doorway of a vehicle.
Officers identified the man as the 20-year-old.
When contacted by police, both men denied participation in the thefts and claimed they had been framed.
Musser said police still have the rest of the stolen property. “Considering this change we will be moving to get authorization to return it,” he said.
According to charging documents, police received a tip that the 20-year-old and 19-year-old were responsible for the string of thefts.
Several residents also reported seeing two young men during the early morning hours the night of the thefts. One man reported seeing two men in hooded sweatshirts rifling through a backpack.
A woman reported seeing two young men in dark-colored clothing walk through the home she was house-sitting. The men left after the dog started barking.
The Haines court issued a summons for the two men Monday.