Peninsula Daily News News Sources
EVERETT — A Snohomish County judge sentenced former Port Townsend High School cross-country standout Bereket Piatt to five years in prison for a Jan. 23 carjacking and bank robbery in north Everett.
Piatt pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, first-degree robbery and harassment (threats to kill).
He was sentenced June 27, The Daily Herald of Everett reported. A kidnapping charge was dropped in exchange for his plea.
A Snohomish County judge Thursday asked how a young man who had never been in trouble with the law could have strayed so far afield, The Herald said.
“It doesn’t happen out of nowhere,” Superior Court Judge Bruce Weiss said.
Armed with a gun, the former track star approached a 16-year-old at Everett Community College and forced her to drive to a Wells Fargo Bank in Everett.
e threatened her with death if she drove away, police said. He also threatened to kill the teller if he didn’t give him the money, the Herald said.
He left with $8,000, then forced the girl, whose name was not released, to drive him back to where he originally abducted her.
Snohomish County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Chris Dickinson said he agreed to drop a kidnapping charge in exchange for Piatt’s guilty plea.
Piatt reportedly spent the stolen money on a used car, strippers and a plane ticket to Puerto Rico.
He was sentenced to the maximum under the law.
In a letter to the judge, Piatt’s father said his son excelled at track but struggled with schoolwork and dropped out of Everett Community, where he had been a cross-country star and was studying criminal justice on an athletic scholarship.
John Piatt and his wife, Nancy Naslund, had their son adopted from Ethopia.
He also said that his son lived with clinical depression.
“We know that the crimes to which he pled guilty were serious crimes, and we would not diminish their gravity nor make excuses for their commission,” John Piatt wrote.
“We were, and still are, shocked that Bereket would commit such serious crimes and threaten innocent people in the process.”
He asked the judge for leniency.
“We can offer no rational explanation for his erratic behavior,” he said in his letter.
“But we hope and pray Bereket has not wandered down a one-way street; that Bereket can return from his errant path and still make good in society,” the man wrote.
Piatt won the Class 1A state cross-country championship as a junior at Port Townsend High School in 2009 and was named the All-Peninsula boys cross-country MVP by the Peninsula Daily News that same year.
