Three Irrigon men sentenced to 3+ years for wire theft

MORROW COUNTY – Three men have pled guilty and been sentenced on theft and mischief charges stemming from a February theft of wire from locomotive engines and a local irrigation company in Morrow County.

32-year-old Ernest William Erickson, 48-year-old Lawerence Allen Perrin and 53-year-old Chester Brent Paradiso, all of Irrigon, were all arrested in the early morning hours of February 27 after someone with Kern Brothers Irrigation called the Morrow County Sheriff’s Department (MCSO) to report someone had come onto their property and stole wire. After a pursuit involving MCSO, Oregon State Police and the Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office the three were arrested in Umatilla County with the stolen wire and wire motors in their possession.

After the wire was returned to Kern Brothers, they reported that some of the wire returned was not theirs. A subsequent investigation by MCSO and the Boardman Police Department determined that the wire that did not belong to Kern Brothers was from a Union Pacific railroad locomotive.

As part of a settlement, each defendant plead guilty to one charge each of felony first-degree mischief and felony first-degree theft, all other charges in the case were dismissed.

For felony-first degree mischief each was given a 30 month sentence with the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODC) with credit for time served and two years of post-prison supervision. For felony first-degree theft each was sentenced to 13 months with ODC with the same stipulations as the mischief count. These sentences are consecutive, which means once the time for one count is served they will begin serving time for the other.

Each will have to pay restitution, but this has not yet been calculated.

“I have to thank Oregon voters for this sentence.  Without the voter enacted repeat property law, these would have been all probationary sentences,” said Morrow County District Attorney Justin Nelson. 

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Elkhorn Media Group