Teen pleads guilty in pawn shop heist

SANDPOINT — A Clark Fork teen pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing more than 30 firearms from a Ponderay pawn shop last year.

Christopher Robin Garlin is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Coeur d’Alene on Jan. 13, 2013.

Garlin, 19, was one of three people arrested in connection with the Pawn Now heist on Dec. 27, 2011.

Austin Blake Thrasher and his wife, Jennifer, were also implicated in the heist.

While in custody on burglary and theft charges, Garlin disclosed that he witnessed Austin Thrasher shoot Michael Wyatt Smith several months earlier.

Austin Thrasher, 20, was charged in state court with first-degree murder. Garlin and Jennifer Thrasher were charged as accessories to murder because they initially withheld knowledge of the killing from law enforcement.

Smith, also 19, was shot in the head and torso outside Thrasher’s home in Cocolalla and his body was later discovered in a makeshift grave in the Rapid Lightning drainage. Investigators believe Smith was slain in September, shortly after he was reported missing.

The pawn shop burglary cases were initially filed in Idaho’s 1st District court, although the cases against Garlin and Jennifer Thrasher were later shunted to federal court. They were prosecuted as part of Idaho’s Project Safe Neighborhoods Program, according to Michael W. Mitchell, assistant U.S. attorney.

Project Safe Neighborhoods seeks to reduce gun violence in Idaho. The case was investigated Ponderay Police, Bonner County Sheriff’s Office, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.

Jennifer Thrasher, 23, pleaded guilty in federal court to theft of firearms from a federally licensed dealer’s inventory in July. She is to be sentenced on Oct. 26.

Garlin and Jennifer Thrasher face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the federal theft charges.

Garlin entered his plea in the federal case the same day his attorney filed a proposed plea agreement to resolve the accessory-to-murder case in state court.

The agreement recommends that Garlin’s sentence in the state case run concurrently with the federal case with a two-year cap on the prison term. However, if Garlin is sentenced to time served in the federal case, he would not be made to serve any further time in the state case.

It’s not clear what federal prosecutors will recommend in the theft case because the plea agreement remains filed under seal, U.S. District Court records indicate.

Garlin’s defense counsel, Paul Vogel, and Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall are asking the court to bind itself to the terms of the agreement. A ruling on the request is pending.

All three defendants remain in custody.

The proceedings in Austin Thrasher’s cases are on hold because he has been deemed too mentally ill to assist in his own defense. A progress hearing on his competency is pending in 1st District Court.