From the Courts, Feb. 8, 2017

Woman sentenced for illegally selling prescription pills

A Great Falls woman received three years probation Monday in District Court for illegally selling prescription pills in Havre.

Callie Jo Hardesty, born in 1991, received a three-year suspended sentence for the offense of felony criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

The sentence was pursuant to a plea deal that dropped an additional similar charge.

An informant told a Tri-Agency Safe Trails Task Force Agent Aug. 2, 2013, that Hardesty was selling Hydrocodone pills for $8 a pill, court documents say.

The informant was searched by officers before going into a residence to buy five 5 milligram pills of Hydrocodone.

During the debriefing, the informant said they went into the home and waited for a close relative of Hardesty’s to arrive. The relative arrived and sold the informant eight pills for $40.

The informant contacted the Task Force agent again Aug. 19, saying that Hardesty offered to sell Ativan pills for $5 each. The informant met with officers to set up a controlled drug deal.

The informant met Hardesty in a First Street business parking lot, got in and bought four 5-milligram Lorazepam pills.

Woman in her 70s sentenced for stealing truck

A Havre woman in her 70s received three years probation Monday in District Court for stealing a pickup truck.

Donna S. Meyers, born in 1945, received a suspended three-year sentence with the Department of Corrections for felony theft. The sentence is pursuant to a plea deal.

Police dispatch received a call July 24 from a man who said his GMC truck had been stolen from Northern Montana Hospital while he was working, court records say.

The man told the officer that he had an iPad, golf clubs, two BB guns, a fillet knife, a title compressor, wrestling shoes, jumper cables, tow straps, a box of .22-caliber bullets and two boxes of 410 shotgun shells in the vehicle.

The next day, the man called the police station to tell officers he’d seen hospital surveillance footage of the theft. In the video, the man said he saw Meyers get into his truck through the passenger door and drive away. The man said he knew Meyers from the hospital.

An officer went to Meyers’ residence but did not find her or the truck.

Later that day, a pawnshop employee called the police to report someone had tried to pawn items that had been stolen from the man’s truck but had left after he told them the items had been stolen.

That day, another pawnshop employee called police to tell them two people were trying to pawn those same stolen items and they were at the shop. The two officers went to the second pawnshop, where they found the two people. A man and woman were arrested.

The man who’d been arrested told the officer that Meyers, his grandmother, had asked him to sell a set of golf clubs because she needed money. When he was told they were stolen at the first pawnshop, the woman he was with suggested they try sell them somewhere else, he said. The man told the officer he wanted nothing to do with stolen items, and he would help the police find Meyers and the stolen truck.

Later that day, Meyers was pulled over by a Montana Highway Patrol trooper after running a stop sign in Havre.

Meyers was unable to provide her license but provided a receipt for staying in Beaver Creek Park and indicated the vehicle belonged to the man at the hospital.

Man sentenced for driving drunk with children in vehicle

A Havre man received three years probation Monday in District Court for driving drunk with two small children in the car.

Adrian Shawl, born in 1992, received a three-year deferred imposition of sentence for felony criminal child endangerment, a sentence pursuant to a plea deal that dropped additional charges. If he abides by the conditions of his release, Shawl can have the offense struck off his record.

An officer pulled over a single-cab pickup truck June 1 after the driver, Shawl, went through an intersection red light so fast the tires screeched, court documents say.

The officer stepped out and noticed a man sitting in the bed of the truck. The officer smelled alcohol on Shawl’s breath while talking to him about the reason he was stopped. A woman in the passenger seat was holding her and Shawl’s 11-month-old child on her lap. A second child, a 6-month-old, was buckled in a car seat between the woman and Shawl.

Shawl admitted to the officer that he had been drinking, charging documents say.

As the officer walked back to his a car, a second woman, ran to him and said her child was in the car driven by Shawl. The woman said she did not know that Shawl had been drinking.

After a series of tests and blowing a blood alcohol concentration of .172, Shawl was arrested for driving under the influence, and the woman in the passenger seat, along with the two adults in the truck and the 11-month-old were taken home.

People with a BAC of .08 can be charged with driving under the influence.

Shawl went through another series of sobriety tests at the Hill County Detention Center, after which he told the officer he had drank eight cans of 16-ounce beer within the last four hours. Shawl told the officer he’d been diagnosed with myotonic muscular dystrophy and had a hard time walking.