Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Nurses' assistant pleads guilty to selling wedding bands stolen from ailing veterans!




roanoke.com ^ | 7-10-12 | Neil Harvey

One of two nurses' assistants charged in the thefts of wedding bands from ailing, elderly veterans pleaded guilty today in Roanoke Circuit Court to eight felonies.
Ashley Michelle Sweeney, 23, of Ferrum admitted that in January she accepted rings taken from four patients at the Virginia Veterans Care Center on Shenandoah Avenue in northwest Roanoke. She also admitted selling them at two pawn shops along Williamson Road.
Judge Clifford Weckstein found Sweeney guilty of four counts each of receiving and selling stolen property, offenses that carry a combined maximum penalty of 120 years in prison. She will be sentenced at a hearing in September.
Through Sweeney’s plea agreement, prosecutors dropped two counts of obtaining money by false pretenses. Sweeney had also been charged with four counts of grand larceny, but those were downgraded to the less serious charge of receiving stolen goods.
Sweeney and another suspect in the case, Brittney Heather Cook, were working as contract nurses' assistants when they were arrested in February during an investigation of ring thefts at the veterans care center, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Joshua Dietz said in court.
Dietz said detectives connected Sweeney and Cook to the victims by their work schedules and said the two women rode to work together and were inseparable on the job.
“Other nurses described them as being always together, even when they were not assigned to the same room,” he said.
Sweeney used her identification on Jan. 14 and 15 to pawn four rings, and she and Cook were recorded on security cameras exchanging the jewelry for a total of $405, Dietz said, adding that personal appraisals placed the value of the yellow gold wedding bands at approximately $4,650. He said the women had ended their work shifts at 3 p.m. those days, and both sales were made less than an hour later.
Dietz said Cook has admitted taking only two of the four rings and said she denied taking them off the fingers of their owners, a claim he said is contradicted by evidence of bruising on the wrist and hand of one of the victims.
Cook, who faces multiple charges of grand larceny and obtaining money by false pretenses, is due in court July 30.
Both women, who are not registered nurses, are restricted by the court from working as nurses' assistants and from making contact with each other.
Prosecutors said all of the victims in the case were elderly and suffering from afflictions that ranged from dementia and Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s disease, and one of them has since died. Aged 77 to 89, most served in either World War II or Korea, and one of them fought at the battle of Okinawa.
Four rings taken and pawned were returned to their owners. A fifth ring, belonging to a female patient at the veterans center, is still unaccounted for, Dietz said.

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