Carjack crew member sentenced
Toolbox
By Brent Curtis STAFF WRITER - Published: September 22, 2009
Rahe Autry told a Rutland County judge last week that he never intended to hurt anyone — or even to be in Vermont — the night he and two other men violently seized a car from three people on Wheelerville Road.
"It was a simple ride gone wrong," said Autry, who came from Waterbury, Conn., to Vermont in August 2008. "I can't live like this anymore. The situation I'm in right now makes me look like some kind of animal."
Judge Thomas Zonay, who was trying to decide whether to impose a requested 48-month to 50-month jail sentence as Autry spoke, asked the 22-year-old why the three people who Autry pleaded guilty to assaulting and robbing should see him as anything more than an "animal."
"You may not have left Connecticut with the intent to hurt anybody, but you did," Zonay said during a pointed interview the judge conducted from the bench that took up a large part of the sentencing hearing. "Why couldn't you have walked away?"
Autry, who the judge eventually sentenced to four years in jail, told the judge he was frightened and out of his element the night of Aug. 19, 2008, when he, George Gaston, Mark Hunter and Hasan Hickey came to Vermont.
The four men were pursued by police after a shooting in Leicester that injured resident Richard Carroll. Carroll, a convicted felon, had his furlough revoked and was jailed after the shooting. No charges were ever brought over the shooting in large part, Addison County prosecutors have said, because of Carroll's unwillingness to cooperate.
But Autry and his three companions from Connecticut were arrested in Rutland County after they ditched their white Cadillac Escalade on Wheelerville Road and carjacked a Chevrolet Cavalier from local residents Amanda Guyette, Colby Power and Dale Sarama.
After the vehicle was reported stolen, police stopped the Connecticut men on Route 4 in Fair Haven.
During the chase, Rutland City police dog King Luther was accidentally killed when he was struck by a state police cruiser. While the trooper involved in the accident believed he was pursuing the Escalade, the Connecticut men had turned off Route 7 before reaching the city limits.
When Autry was appeared in court last Wednesday, he became the first defendant in the case sentenced for assault and robbery in the car jacking.
While Hunter was sentenced to 39 months in jail late last month, he was convicted of a felony count of possession of stolen property after prosecutors decided they lacked evidence to prove he participated in the carjacking.
On the same day that Autry was sentenced, his co-defendant Hickey — who Autry described as the ringleader behind the carjacking — pleaded guilty to assault and robbery in exchange for a plea deal that would sentence him to a minimum of five years in jail.
Gaston pleaded guilty to assault and robbery last month in exchange for a deal that would sentence him to a minimum of 56 months in jail.
But prison sentences in plea deals aren't set in stone and Zonay told Autry he was prepared to reject what he believed was insufficient jail time until he heard Autry describe not only his aspirations for turning over a new leaf but what he was already doing in prison through programs and education to reform himself.
"Absent the positive steps to recognize, address and alter your behavior, the court can't say it would have accepted this sentence," Zonay said. "Mr. Autry made many statements here today. I hope he lives up to them."
brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com
13