ELLSWORTH, Maine — A Swan’s Island man received a sentence Wednesday that, if he gets in trouble with the law again, could put him back behind bars for another 10 years.
Roman C. Cook, 24, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Hancock County Unified Criminal Court to felony charges of burglary and theft stemming from a November 2014 break-in at a Swan’s Island home. The plea was part of an agreement Cook reached on the charges with the Hancock County District Attorney’s office.
Cook has prior offenses from 2010, when he was one of three people who, during a daylong vandalism spree, broke into more than a dozen lakefront homes in Mount Desert and caused more than $125,000 in total damage.
In the 2010 case, he received a sentence of eight years in prison with all but two years suspended, and was ordered to serve three years of probation upon his release.
Cook was on probation at the time of the November 2014 burglary, in which he and another man broke into someone’s house and stole 120 feet of copper piping — causing more than $1,200 in damage when they ripped it out — that they later sold for $94.
Cook served 105 days in jail on the resulting probation revocation and received credit for the time served on Wednesday, when he appeared in court before Justice Bruce Mallonee.
Cook’s defense attorney, William Blaisdell of Ellsworth, told Mallonee that while Cook was enrolled in drug court last year on a separate probation violation, he voluntarily told court officials about the copper piping theft and said he had been involved. Blaisdell added that Cook has completed a drug abuse treatment program and has stayed out of trouble since being released from jail last December.
“He has been doing well on probation,” Blaisdell said.
Mallonee sentenced Cook on Wednesday to 10 years in prison, all of it suspended, on the latest burglary and theft convictions. Cook also was ordered to serve four more years of probation, to not use alcohol or drugs, to submit to random searches and testing for alcohol and drugs, and to pay $1,258 in restitution.
When asked by Mallonee, Cook told the judge he had been struggling with heroin addiction. Mallonee encouraged him to stay away from drugs and alcohol and to continue to live up to the terms of his probation. If not, Cook will end up in prison for another decade.
“I really hope you’ll be able to [quit doing drugs],” Mallonee told Cook. “There’s going to be little room for messing up.”
