Michael Ray Snyder 8-30-2015

We ought to express our thanks and support for the firefighters that have poured into our area to fight these terrible fires. I have seen trucks from as far away as Minnesota and New Mexico and I am sure many more are coming. The Emergency Coordinator, former Stevens County Sheriff’s detective, Jim Caruso, says this is the worst disaster ever to come to Stevens County. He was just hired just before these fires began and has been working hard to keep organized and the people informed. This is hard to do because the fire situation is fluid. It can change radically in a few hours.

Above all, do not burn anything or carelessly dispose of any cigarette. Careless people set most fires. There are lightening caused fires, but most start along side a road or in a yard. Just be careful with everything that burns. Wait till the wet season before burning anything.

Michael Ray Snyder, 31 yrs old, was sentenced to 204 months in prison last Tuesday. He received this sentence as a result of his involvement in an Armed Robbery of the Old Schoolhouse Store in Addy last January. During the Robbery, he was armed with a saw-off shotgun and threatened the clerk with the gun to her face. At the sentencing, Judge Nielson saw a video of the robbery and deemed it a very violent crime.

At the sentencing hearing, the clerk who threatened and robbed told the Judge how she had been affected by the incident. The defendant’s mother spoke on his behalf and told Judge Neilson that her son had been heading down the right road until about 2007. She said that her son tried Meth one time and that from then on, that is all he wanted. She told a brief story of his drug addiction and that he would do OK for a while and then get back into it. Like every good mother, she was grieved to see her son ruin his life and asked the Judge to be a lenient as he could in his sentence.

The state pointed out that he has been to prison before, and after the sentencing here, was headed for Snohomish County for a sentencing on a Robbery charge there. In that case he had less of a role, but was an accomplice. He has multiple prior felony convictions.

After summarizing the situation, and noting what sentences have been given to others with the same charge, Judge Nielson sentenced Mr. Snyder to the maximum sentence of 204 months.

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