Man gets 7 years for burglary

There may not have been a dry eye in Judge Tari Eitzen’s courtroom Wednesday when she allowed prolific burglar Donald Gene Myhren to hold his 3-month-old daughter before going to prison.

Still, Eitzen told the 23-year-old Myhren, “This is not one of those cases where I struggle with what I do. I think you are a terrible menace to this community.”

The Spokane County Superior Court judge rejected Myhren’s plea for a light sentence under a special program for perpetrators of drug-related crimes. Instead she called him a “crime machine” and gave him a maximum-standard seven years in prison.

As emotionally wrenching as the sight of Myhren weeping and kissing his daughter was the heartbreak Laurie Hopkins said Myhren caused when he burglarized and trashed her recently deceased mother’s Spokane Valley home.

“We didn’t get to mourn in the right way,” Hopkins said.

Instead of reminiscing as they sorted and divided her mother’s possessions, family members conducted a hurried inventory to assist sheriff’s detectives.

Instead of sharing cherished memories, family members shared a sense of anger and violation, Hopkins said.

She said the home contained little of value to a thief, but Myhren took a 60-year-old baby book and a 150-year-old heirloom wedding diary.

His disrespectful treatment of her childhood home added to her pain, “especially when he threw our mother’s Bible on the floor,” Hopkins said. “There wasn’t a drawer that wasn’t dumped or turned upside down.”

Myhren faced a standard range of 51/4 to 7 years when he pleaded guilty Wednesday to 10 counts of residential burglary, three counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, one count of identity theft and one count of regular first-degree theft.

Deputy Prosecutor Bob Sargent agreed to drop two burglary counts and two firearm enhancements for use of guns during the burglaries. The firearm enhancements would have added a mandatory 10 years to Myhren’s sentence.

Sargent said Myhren was involved in “12 known burglaries,” and Eitzen said she suspected Myhren was guilty of others as well.

Assistant Public Defender Michael Elston urged Eitzen to sentence Myhren under the state’s Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative, which would have split a mid-range six-year sentence between prison and monitored probation accompanied by drug treatment.

With a typical early release, Sargent said, Myhren could have been back on the streets in 11/2 years.

Eitzen noted she conducts a drug court program and believes in drug treatment, but said Myhren crossed a “bright line.” Unlike a drug offender who steals cars or whose only crime is drug use, Myhren entered people’s homes with a gun, she said.

Myhren was the third of three men to be sentenced in connection with a rash of residential burglaries throughout Spokane County last June and July. Cole W. Shale pleaded guilty in November to 14 counts and was sentenced to 43/4 years in prison.

Sargent said Shale traded methamphetamine for the property Myhren stole in the burglaries. Another man, Jake Walker, pleaded guilty to two of the burglaries, Sargent said.