A man who made a phony call to Bemidji police after burglarizing a convenience store last summer was sentenced Monday in Beltrami County Court.
Shaun Allen Windom, 21, of Laporte, pleaded guilty Feb. 13 for felony third-degree burglary.
District Judge John Melbye ordered Windom to pay $838.67 in restitution, five years of supervised probation and pay a $1,500 fine. Windom was credited with 67 days served in jail.
According to court papers:
Last July 15, Bemidji officers arrived around 4:50 a.m. at the Tesoro store on Fourth Street Northwest in response to a burglar alarm.
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When they arrived they found a window on the south side of the building had been smashed.
A witness told police he had seen a young man smash the window with a broom and run into the store.
After a Tesoro employee arrived to let police officers into the store, police discovered a number of cigarette packages had been taken.
Video surveillance footage from inside the store showed a man entering the store, going behind the counter and grabbing several packs of cigarettes and then exiting the store through the broken window.
Approximately 30 minutes later, dispatch received a call from a man reporting he had been stabbed. The caller said he was near a store located at the 700 block of Paul Bunyan Drive Northwest and said a vehicle drove up and took several shots at him.
Officers located the caller who identified himself as Windom. One of the officers recognized him as the man he saw in the video entering the Tesoro store. Windom was placed under arrest and taken to jail.
At the jail, Windom admitted he had broken into the Tesoro store to steal cigarettes. He further admitted his 911 call had been fake and that no one had taken shots at him.
