Halloween candy robber gets 6 months

ANCHORAGE — Kendra Butts was sentenced Wednesday to six months in federal prison for charges relating to the robbery of eight trick-or-treaters in Talkeetna last year.

Butts, 19, had earlier pleaded no contest to one count of conspiring to obstruct justice.

According to a U.S. Attorney’s office report, Butts received a call from her boyfriend, Michael Wilson, who still is in prison awaiting trial for his role in the case.

The U.S Attorney said Wilson asked Butts to remove firearms from a truck in a police impound lot or, failing that, set the truck on fire.

Butts and Amber Martin, 21, are alleged to have been the masked pair who jumped from a truck in Talkeetna Halloween night, demanded candy, fired a round from a pistol and made off with the loot.

Wilson and another man, Aaron Tolen, were arrested that night, found with the truck the kids described at a Talkeetna restaurant. Butts and Martin were apprehended later.

Both women have already pleaded no contest to robbery in state court where they are awaiting sentencing. Prosecutors have not yet reached a plea deal with Tolen or Wilson.

Both men face a significantly different list of charges, mostly relating to a cache of stolen items Alaska State Troopers uncovered while investigating the robbery.

Gravel pit vandal sought

WASILLA — Alaska State Troopers are looking for the person who did $10,000 damage to a grader at a Wasilla gravel pit.

Troopers say they got a call at 9:10 a.m. Wednesday from a Big Lake resident saying that some construction equipment was damaged at a gravel pit on the Parks Highway.

Sometime early that morning or the previous evening, someone got into an excavator and swung the boom around, smashing into the grader, troopers report. The excavator was not damaged.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 745-3333 or State Troopers at 373-8000.