Judge sees ‘good people at their worst’

A black belt who threw a propane tank through a window in April will be released from jail in the coming days.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20151102/NEWS01/151109874

Published November 2, 2015 in the Rutland Herald Judge sees ‘good people at their worst’ By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A black belt who threw a propane tank through a window in April will be released from jail in the coming days. He threw the propane tank through the window in order to gain entry to a home on Slack Avenue in Springfield, where he beat an accused drug dealer so badly that witnesses initially thought the victim might be dead. Job Thorburn, 41, of Springfield pleaded guilty this week to felony counts of burglary and attempting to elude police in exchange for credit for the six months he has already served in pre-trial detention since his arrest. He received a suspended two-to-five-year sentence that will see him spend the next five years on probation. Windsor County Deputy State’s Attorney Heidi Remick told the court that she agreed to the plea deal after taking into account the questionable backgrounds of many of the witnesses the state would have had to rely upon had the attack gone before a jury, explaining, “This is a case where it’s believed that much of the conduct was (drug) related.” “These crimes are serious and the affidavit is scary,” Judge Nancy Corsones noted from the bench as she imposed the sentence. Turning to Thorburn, who stood behind the defense table in a blue prison uniform, the judge remarked, “It sounds like your family has been obliterated by substance abuse… you are certainly not the first addict that got in trouble with the criminal justice system, but this is just very concerning behavior, so you have a lot of work to do.” Noting that his wife just had his fourth child while he was incarcerated this summer, Thorburn replied, “I just want to live a life for my family and that’s it, your honor,” adding a short time later that when it came to drug users, “I’m not going to be around those kinds of people now.” Corsones picked up the conversation with Thorburn, saying, “I think for about the last maybe five years I’ve kind of been in this fog of ‘Are we ever going to recover from the heroin epidemic?’ You know what I mean? It’s like everything we do these days is heroin or somehow related.” The judge, who recently rotated from the district court in Rutland to the courthouse in White River Junction, continued, “Quite frankly, coming to Windsor County has been an education. I’ve never been over on this side of the state before, and the substance abuse issues here are as serious as they are anywhere else in Vermont.” Corsones said she was “starting to see little sprinkles of hope” in the situation, pointing to the efforts of police in Rutland to combat drug dealing “just block-by-block and neighborhood-by-neighborhood trying to reclaim at least the Rutland community. Maybe that work can be done in Springfield,” the judge suggested. “I don’t know. I just want to say that I recognize that very rarely do we deal with just ‘bad-bad’ people in criminal court. It’s good people at their worst, and so I think (in this case) the addiction probably just took hold of you.” Springfield Police Sgt. Gregory Molgano wrote in an affidavit filed with the court that shortly after midnight on April 16, several officers responded to a series of frantic 911 calls reporting that “someone was killing someone at 10 Slack Avenue.” Molgano arrived first and watched as Thorburn sped away from the scene in a blue mini-van with his wife and their three young children on board, one of whom was an infant in a car seat. The mini-van bounced off a stone wall on a neighboring property and then led the sergeant on a circular two-mile chase through downtown Springfield. The chase ended minutes later back at the intersection of Wall and Hartness Street, within sight of where the pursuit began. Police said several items seized from the van, including a glass drug pipe, later tested positive for cocaine and ‘bath salts’ residue. Thorburn was pulled from behind the wheel at gunpoint and handcuffed by police, who noted that he was bleeding from a large gash to the back of his head. Thorburn claimed the gash had come from being hit from behind with a baseball bat. Thorburn was rushed to Springfield Hospital, then put on a medical helicopter and flown to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, because of what doctors said appeared to be severe chemical burns in his throat consistent with drug use. Springfield Police Officer Craig Watrous wrote that he arrived back at the residence to find “obvious signs of forced entry” with “the window to the door of the residence smashed completely out” and home owner Louis Turcio “bleeding (and) leaning out of one of the windows… only semi-responsive.” Several other people were found inside the home, along with a illegally sawed-off shotgun and a large amount of drug paraphernalia, Vermont State Police Trooper Eric Vitali noted in his affidavit accompanying the case. Turcio told police that he barely knew Thorburn, but had been awakened by Thorburn pounding on his door demanding the return of a friend’s .45 caliber handgun. Days beforehand, Thorburn had reported to skeptical police that the gun had been stolen from his wife. Turcio told officers he did not know anything about it. “Turcio told me that (Thorburn) threw a propane tank that had been sitting on his porch though his living room window and then climbed through the window and started swinging at him and hitting him,” Molgano wrote. “Turcio asked (Thorburn) why he was doing this and pleaded for him to stop (but Thorburn) smashed a wooden chair over Turcio’s head four or five times, almost knocking him out (before) he was knocked back onto a sofa chair and the assailant jumped on him and put him in a headlock and tried to choke him out.” Turcio told the sergeant that next, Thorburn grabbed a spindle from the shattered chair “and tried to stick the piece of wood through his eye socket.” “(Turcio) was able to get free and grab what he described as possibly a two-foot-long piece of wooden railing and hit (Thorburn) with that” before fleeing the house. He said Thorburn then began chasing him around a truck in the driveway just as police began to arrive and Thorburn ran to the van and fled the scene, Molgano concluded. Police had raided Turcio’s house just two days beforehand, on April 14, and seized a pound of bath salts. That raid followed another one in March that came in the wake of a heroin overdose that nearly claimed a local resident, and which resulted in the seizure of six firearms, bath salts, $2,000 in cash, and what police at the time detailed as over a hundred separate items of drug paraphernalia scattered throughout the various rooms of the residence. Earlier this month, Turcio, 51, was charged by federal authorities with participating in a drug distribution conspiracy with two other men. Investigators said that conspiracy was responsible for allegedly arranging for thousands of dollars worth of bath salts at a time to be shipped in from China to locations in Vermont and New Hampshire. Turcio, who is already a convicted felon, is currently facing up to 50 years in federal prison on the conspiracy charges and for allegedly having been found to be in possession of the firearms found in his house on March 9. Turcio also pleaded innocent at an arraignment in late August at the Windsor County courthouse to four misdemeanor counts of possession of a narcotic. Those charges came in the wake of a search warrant that was executed on Turcio’s home on March 10 because of what police said was a near overdose death in an apartment above the garage there that had taken place the previous evening. Speaking to Thorburn at the conclusion of his sentencing hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Corsones said, “I know where you are coming from in terms of the amount of work you have to do to resurrect your own life and resurrect your family life… so I don’t want to sound negative, like ‘see you later.’ I know you’ve got a lot of work to do, but you also have a supportive environment here that can help you earn your way out of this. The biggest concern is that you get your family back, so keep that as your focus.” Thorburn does not have a previous criminal record. Referring to the continued presence of illegal drugs in the community, the judge admonished Thorburn, “The minute that distraction comes in, just think of your kids. (Think) ‘will this help me reunite my family?’ and, if it doesn’t, go the other way and control your temper and control your anger. Do the things that you are supposed to do and there is certainly a strong possibility of success, but if you go back into that community and fall into those old patterns, it will only be a matter of time before you are back in jail.” “That will never happen, your honor,” Thorburn assured the judge.