Prison recommended in Harding case

SANDPOINT — Imprisonment is again being recommended in the case of a Bonner County woman on probation in connection with a slaying at Priest Lake.

Tyrah Brea Harding was arrested on Christmas Eve for crashing a truck she did not have permission to drive. She was charged with driving a vehicle without the owner’s consent.

But the charge was bumped down to the misdemeanor level after damage estimates came in below $1,000, according to court documents.

She pleaded guilty on Jan. 6 and Judge Justin Julian sentenced her to 30 days in jail with 16 days suspended and 14 days credit. Restitution in the case is pending.

It was the second time in the last 11 months Harding ran afoul of the law since being sentenced for accessory to second-degree murder and grand theft by possession of stolen property.

Harding, 28, was given a suspended prison term of 2-12 years after pleading guilty to involvement in the 2007 killing of Leslie Carlton Breaw in Coolin. Her former husband, Keith Allen Brown, remains jailed and awaiting trial for first-degree murder.

Brown, 49, insists he is innocent of murder.

Harding was sentenced last year, after spending two years in jail awaiting trial. She managed to skirt prison after her first probation violation, but her second triggered a recommendation that she be imprisoned for at least six months, court documents show.

Along with committing another offense by taking the vehicle, Harding continued to stay in contact with an abusive boyfriend she was expressly forbidden from seeing.

In a letter to the court, Harding said she was fleeing the man when she took his friend’s pickup truck. Harding said he drunkenly berated her and physically assaulted her.

“I was just trying to keep myself safe and to get away from (him) throwing me around,” she said in the letter.