PORT TOWNSEND – Two Port Townsend men – one a former captain of the Port Townsend High School football team – pleaded guilty Friday to charges – five in one case, 23 in the other – related to a string of burglaries and attempted burglaries of businesses, homes and one church in spring 2006.
Pleading guilty to five charges was former Redskins quarterback, 19-year-old Austin James Thacker.
He was sentenced in Jefferson County Superior Court to 50 months in prison for second-degree burglary, residential burglary, possession of methamphetamine, theft of a firearm and first-degree theft.
Niles Reid Shroyer, 21, pleaded guilty to 23 counts of second-degree burglary and attempted burglary on Friday and will be sentenced on Aug. 31. He will remain on electronic home monitoring until then.
Thacker originally faced 32 charges and 50 years in prison, while Shroyer faced 66 charges and up to 60 years in prison.
Both were arrested on June 14, 2006.
Neither man had a prior criminal record.
“It’s very sad to see someone of your potential going to prison as long as you’re going to go for,” Jefferson County Superior Court Judge Craddock Verser told Thacker before sentencing him to more than four years in prison.
Thacker’s defense attorney Richard Davies, whose Port Townsend law office was one of the targets of the burglaries that Shroyer pleaded guilty to, said in court on Friday that the several-week crime spree was “a pretty alarming case for the community,” with places hit in Port Townsend, Port Ludlow and Chimacum.
“I think equally shocking to the community was that Austin Thacker was involved,” he said.
“Six months earlier, he was the captain of the football team.”
In September 2005, when Thacker took over calling the signals for the Redskins from departing quarterback Ian Sather, Sather referred to Thacker as “a natural leader.”
