Defense Will Appeal Burglary-Shootout Sentence Roose Had Surrendered And Did Not Participate In The Shootout

(From For the Record, December 6, 1996:) Convicted burglar Robert L. Roose is appealing his sentence after surviving a shootout with police in Colville. A Tuesday headline mistakenly identified Roose’s lawyer as the burglar.

Defense attorney Charles Burns said Monday he will appeal the 14-1/2-year sentence handed down last month to the burglar who survived a June 27 shootout with police in Colville.

Stevens County Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson gave Robert L. Roose, 22, the maximum standard sentence after he pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary and nine counts of firearm theft. Roose’s accomplice, Elmer L. Ingram, 21, was shot to death after the two men broke into Clark’s All-Sports to steal guns.

Ordinarily, a standard-range sentence in a plea-bargained case is not appealable. But Burns believes the judge ruled improperly that Roose failed to present a “substantial and compelling” argument for a lighter-than-standard sentence.

“What the judge is doing is simply punishing him for associating with Ingram,” Burns said.

Roose had surrendered and did not participate in the shootout that Ingram started.

“If his friend hadn’t done what he did, we wouldn’t even be discussing this,” Burns said. “It would be just another runof-the mill burglary.”

Colville Police Chief Damond Meshishnek gave this account:

Roose and Ingram set off a silent alarm when they broke through the front door of the sporting goods store, and two officers were outside waiting for backup when Roose came back out the door. Both he and Ingram, who was still inside the store, complied when the officers ordered them to lie down.

Colville policeman Bob Meshishnek (the chief’s son) took charge of Roose while Stevens County sheriff’s Deputy Dan Spring saw Ingram push himself up and draw a handgun from his waist.

Spring yelled, “Gun!” Spring was crouching to go through the broken door when Ingram shot him in the chest. The .380-caliber ACP bullet hit the deputy’s badge and lodged in his bullet-proof vest, leaving him bruised but unimpaired.

Spring returned fire with his 12-gauge shotgun, hitting Ingram in the right side of his abdomen. Ingram started to turn and Spring shot him in the side again.

Then, as Ingram ran across the front of the store, Officer Meshishnek fired eight rounds through the store window. One of the slugs from Meshishnek’s .45-caliber ACP semiautomatic pistol was found in Ingram’s clothing, near his shoulder. But the slug apparently was spent after passing through the heavy plate-glass window and failed to penetrate Ingram’s skin.

Ingram then started running toward the back of the store, and Spring fired again. An autopsy indicated one of the pellets from that blast entered Ingram’s left side and severed a major artery, causing his death.

Before he died, though, Ingram reached the back of the store and again pointed his gun at Spring. The deputy shot Ingram again and he collapsed.

Ingram was dead when he was examined by Spring and Colville Officer Ron McKinstry, who arrived shortly after the shooting.

, DataTimes