A former Tehama County sheriff’s deputy was sentenced today to more than three years in prison for relentlessly stalking and physically assaulting a Redding woman.
Jack Allen Roberts, 34, of Redding was sentenced by Superior Court Judge James Ruggiero to three years, eight months in prison. He must serve 50 percent of his sentence before being eligible for parole.
Roberts was arrested in April after Redding police placed a tracker on his vehicle to follow his movements in the weeks before his arrest, prosecutors said.
That tracker placed Roberts in the parking lot of the woman’s workplace at the time when gasoline was poured on her vehicle, prosecutors said.
He was later arrested by police outside the woman’s home around 4 a.m., dressed all in black, prosecutors said.
At the time of his April arrest, he had with him a black face mask, binoculars, paint stripper, weed and root killer, a container filled with BBs, sling shot, glass cutter and other items that police and prosecutors believe may have been used in previous vandalism.
Roberts pleaded guilty in July to stalking, battery and related charges.
Prosecutors said that Roberts stalked the woman for about a year, sending anonymous letters to her, making threats and harassing telephone calls, followed her and vandalized her home and vehicle.
He resigned from the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office last year after he had fired a handgun inside his then Cottonwood residence, a law enforcement investigative report says.
According to the criminal complaint, the stalking began around April 2008 and, despite restraining orders issued against him, continued for about a year.
Although Shasta County probation officials recommended that Roberts be granted probation, Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett, who prosecuted Roberts, has said that officials with the state Department of Corrections evaluated him after he pleaded guilty to the charges and determined that he was not a good candidate for probation.
He faced a maximum of five years, four months in prison.
Roberts was charged with 13 felony counts, including stalking, first-degree residential burglary, vandalism, possession of flammable material for malicious use, corporal injury and battery.
In the police report, Robert was described by some witnesses as a “loose cannon,” and had a long relationship with the Redding woman.
But, it said, she learned about three years ago that he was having an affair with a co-worker while he was working as a Tehama County sheriff’s deputy.
Attempts to save the relationship failed and she eventually met another man, the report noted.
She told Redding police investigators in March that she was reluctant to move forward with the case because Roberts had been trying to get a job with a private contracting company to go to work in Iraq and work as an independent contractor.
“Victim stated if she went forward with this case, it may hinder his ability to get that job and he would remain here in Shasta County and continue to be a problem to her,” the Redding Police Department report says.
She said that she was also afraid of him, noting that he can have a violent temper, and feared what he might do to her and her boyfriend, it said.
She later changed her mind, it said, when she found one of her vehicles vandalized and believed he was the one responsible for it.
According to the report, which described a number of instances of physical and emotional abuse, the woman said that he once pushed her against a wall, placed his hands around her neck and began to choke her until her son intervened.
She said that he also, among other things, once pushed her down and slammed her head against the ground, the police report said.
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