August 11, 2012
By Robert L. Baker, CitizensVoice.com
Six of the seven former gas pipeline workers implicated in a poaching incident in Wyoming County just days before the start of last year’s deer season were sentenced Friday.
They each face a $1,000 fine, $1,600 restitution to be made to the Pennsylvania Game Commission and a five-year ban on hunting or application for a hunting license in the Commonwealth.
Wyoming County President Judge Russell Shurtleff handed down the sentences Friday immediately after allowing five of the six to each plead guilty to a lone misdemeanor count of unlawful killing or taking of big game in a closed season.
Timothy A. Barnett, 26, formerly of Imboden, Ark, but now of Loganton, and the alleged ringleader of the incident involving six men from Louisiana, pleaded guilty in June. Those pleading Thursday and immediately sentenced afterward included Jonathon Aden, 23; Robert Sauls, 32; and Steve Ware, 59, all of Oakdale, La.; along with James Lowe, 32, of Pitkin, La.; Weldon Thibodeaux, 36, of Deville, La.
Sauls and Ware were each charged with two felony counts and four misdemeanor counts of unlawful killing of big game in a closed season, while the other four each faced an additional felony count for activity that is alleged to have happened last November.
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There, two more men – Sauls and Ware – were implicated, arrested and charged after the WCOs witnessed additional deer carcasses.