|
#1
●
02-15-2011, 11:17 AM
|
|
Oregon Men Sentenced in Girl's Home Burglary
Three men who broke into the home of 12-year-old Mackenzie Hughes in Troutdale, Oregon, in the spring of 2010 later pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary after she hid under a blanket and stayed on a 911 call for 8 minutes and 15 seconds. Hughes, then a sixth-grader, was at home when the men broke in, according to news coverage of the case. She pulled a blanket over herself on her bed and whispered what she could hear to the dispatcher. One of the men, Alexis Colindres-Munoz, came into her room while the call was still open. The three fled when they heard sirens, and the details Hughes relayed on the line led officers to them, according to those accounts. All three later pleaded guilty in Multnomah County Circuit Court to first-degree burglary. Two also pleaded guilty to stealing a laptop that Hughes had bought with her own money. Colindres-Munoz, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced to six months in jail, three years of probation and 120 hours of community service. Benito Flores-Amador, 23, and Jorge Avila-Rodas, 27, each received a prison term of one year and four months, plus three years of probation if they were not deported. Both men were Honduran nationals living in the country illegally, according to accounts of the hearings. The three were sentenced separately, and each offered some form of apology. "The trauma the girl is going through fills me with sadness," Avila-Rodas said through an interpreter. "And the truth is I really regret that and it's not going to happen again." The call drew national attention for how steadily Hughes handled it, and she appeared on CBS's "The Early Show" and NBC's "Today." Coverage of the sentencing hearings described her as still shaken by the break-in months afterward.
__________________ Support the site and our continued existance by upgrading to a Green Name |