Judge: Two years sober to drop felony
The Aspen Times
An Atlanta man who told Aspen police he was taking a locked motorcycle to his friend Sean Connery this summer pleaded guilty to felony criminal mischief Monday.
However, the felony conviction will be wiped from Kyle Edwards’ criminal record if he stays out of trouble for the next two years, according to a plea deal. Edwards, 21, will be on supervised probation in South Carolina, where he attends college, for those two years and must undergo monitored sobriety tests, District Judge Gail Nichols said.
Edwards and another man, Michael Dickinson, 24, of South Africa, were confronted by police early in the morning in late July as they tried to push a motorcycle with a cable lock around the rear wheel across the intersection of South Mill Street and East Hopkins Avenue, according to a police report.
The men admitted they’d been drinking, and Edwards said they wanted to take the bike back to their friend’s house. When the officer asked the friend’s name, Edwards told him it was “Sean Connery,” the report states.
Later, as an officer attempted to arrest Edwards, he broke away from the officer, began running into Mill Street, smacked into the front of the officer’s patrol car and fell to the ground.
Dickinson pleaded guilty to a similar charge last month, was placed on unsupervised probation and allowed to return to South Africa. His conviction also will be wiped from his record if he stays out of trouble for the next two years.
In other court news
• A 30-year-old former Aspen resident will have two felony convictions on his criminal record and have to spend about a month and a half in jail for repeatedly violating his probation.
Michael Kulik pleaded guilty to theft and drug charges in Aspen in 2012 and was sentenced to three years of probation. He was allowed to move to Minnesota and could have had the charges removed from his record if he’d toed the line and stayed out of trouble. However, Kulik ignored his probation officer after February 2013 and was arrested in Minneapolis in 2013 for stealing more than $600 worth of items from a department store.
He was extradited back to Aspen from Minnesota in September.
Colorado’s probation department recommended he serve two consecutive 90-day sentences for the offenses. However, Nichols sentenced him to two concurrent 90-day sentences and gave him credit for 46 days already served.
Kulik pleaded guilty in 2012 to stealing more than $2,400 from his Aspen employer as well as possessing cocaine.
• Two Aspen High School students who broke into a classmate’s family’s home in Snowmass Village in September and threw a party each pleaded guilty to a felony charge Monday.
The 16-year-old and 17-year-old must stay out of trouble for the next year and the felony charge of second-degree burglary will be expunged from their criminal records. Another 17-year-old accepted a similar plea deal earlier this month.
The three teens originally faced three felonies each — burglary, criminal trespassing and conspiracy to commit burglary — as well as misdemeanor theft for the incident. The teens allegedly also stole alcohol and clothes from the home when the family was out of town on vacation.
