A 32-year-old Ethete, Wyoming, woman is now facing up to 20 years in prison, on claims that she stole steak, hot dogs, house slippers and other goods from Walmart after having been convicted of theft 21 times before.
Normally Wyoming only charges felony theft when someone is accused of stealing something worth more than $1,000 – or a gun or livestock animal. But the state in 2023 passed a law also making it a felony to steal a thing of any value after four earlier theft convictions.
Kimberly Lynn Duran, 32, faces two “fifth-time” felony theft charges on allegations she went on two looting sprees at the Riverton Walmart this autumn.
She pleaded not guilty to one of the charges in Fremont County District Court on Dec. 10 and faces a Dec. 27 hearing in Riverton Circuit Court on the other.
Moonlighting
Riverton Police Department Officer Christian Amos was moonlighting at the Riverton Walmart on Oct. 12, according to an evidentiary affidavit he wrote.
The local Walmart store regularly has police officers and sheriff’s deputies working for it, monitoring for theft and other incidents.
An employee showed Amos video evidence that two weeks earlier on Sept. 28, Duran walked into the store carrying a big pink tote bag, and loaded a cart with chicken buckets and hot dogs from the deli, says the affidavit.
“It was originally thought to be a different woman, but Kimberly Duran has a cuff tattoo on her right wrist that is identifying and can be seen at different points throughout the surveillance video,” Amos wrote.
After she visited the deli, Duran took six packages of steaks from the meat counter and put those in her cart, the document says. Next, the affidavit continues, she put a men’s grey hoodie on her body, grabbed a pair of yellow plush chicken feet slippers, an orange box of men’s shoes, a pink Paris Hilton purse and two containers Gain laundry soap.
She eventually stuffed some of the stolen goods into the Paris Hilton purse and abandoned the laundry soaps, Amos wrote.
She left the store with a shopping cart full of stolen merchandise, totaling $306.41, the document says.
Get Your Purse
Amos later caught up to Duran when she had another alleged looting spree, says an affidavit he filed in a separate theft case.
He was again working at Walmart on Nov. 10. An associate told him that a woman carrying a pink purse had left the north entrance with “possible merchandise” for which she hadn’t paid, he wrote.
Amos went outside and found Duran in a silver Dodge van and confronted her.
“Duran immediately apologized and said the items she stole (were) in fact inside of her pink oversized purse,” Amos wrote. “I told Duran to retrieve her purse.”
She handed over her purse and her identification card. They walked to the service counter to price the goods. They included two rib-eye steaks costing about $31 apiece. plus three pairs of Dickies work pants worth about $25 apiece, the affidavit says.
Everything together was priced at $137.38, Amos wrote.
That was when Amos arrested Duran.
The officer noted in the affidavit that Duran was banned from Walmart for life as of July 24, 2018. That’s a detail that could have made the thefts chargeable as a felony even without the new law since a person may face felony burglary charges if she steals from a place from which she’s been banned.
The affidavit says Duran has been convicted of shoplifting and other theft variations 21 times, starting in Lander, Wyoming, in 2001, and as recently as Nov. 13 of this year in Riverton Municipal Court.
Fremont County Public Defender supervisor Jon Gerard declined Monday to comment, citing the public defender's policy against publicly commenting on ongoing cases.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
