Two men charged with burglarizing a Riverton oil field business and sparking a manhunt that resulted with a witness being struck by gunshot shrapnel have pleaded guilty.
Kevin Troy Allen Pino, 33, faces between 10 and 30 years in prison if District Court Judge Kate McKay accepts his plea agreement and Pino pleads to one count of aggravated burglary with a “habitual criminal” enhancement on it.
His sentencing hearing is set for Oct. 28.
Kenneth D. Hebah, 18, could face a prison term of five to eight years for one count of aggravated burglary. Hebah’s plea agreement contains a caveat: if McKay accepts the deal, she would recommend placing him in the youthful offender program.
Defendants who complete Wyoming’s youthful offender program often circle back to the judge and ask for a sentence reduction at that point.
Hebah’s sentencing hearing is set for Oct. 7.
Both men pleaded guilty in Fremont County District Court on Aug. 12.
Their plea agreements also say that they could be ordered to pay restitution on all of the counts originally filed against them. That includes seven counts (one of them attempted second-degree murder) for Pino, and four for Hebah.
Fremont County Chief Deputy Attorney Tim Hancock has promised to secure a non-prosecution agreement from the federal prosecutor’s office, on any charges of Pino being a felon in possession of a firearm.
If McKay rejects their plea agreements, each man can revert back to a plea of innocent, and either go to trial or negotiate a new plea agreement.
Wake Up
The saga started at about 3:20 a.m. April 29, when the manager of M&M Well Services woke to a business alarm for which he has a remote connection, the manager told Cowboy State Daily at the time.
He came up to the M&M building site on Burma Road just north of Riverton and found two male burglars and what he believed to be a getaway vehicle — a 2000s model Ford F-250. He chased the two men down and they fled.
The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office later that day identified the suspected burglars as Hebah and Pino.
The business secretary also came up to the shop to meet with deputies and help them access security video. On her way to M&M, she noticed the suspected getaway vehicle, documented its license plate and followed it to a trailer park, the manager said at the time.
The Shaking Man
Meanwhile, Fremont County Sheriff’s Deputy Larry Holladay set out for Burma Road to respond to the burglary, but he didn’t have a description of either burglar at that point, says an evidentiary affidavit by FCSO Detective Sara Lowe filed April 30 in Riverton Circuit Court.
Holladay encountered a male in a black hoodie, tan shorts with black pants under them, and black and white shoes walking south toward Riverton on Highway 789, the document says.
The man identified himself as Hebah. He was wet, his hoodie and shorts were torn, and he was shaking visibly, says the affidavit.
But Holladay didn’t have a reason to hold him and had no description on the burglars, so he let the man go and proceeded to M&M Well Service.
On scene, Holladay reviewed the business’s video and recognized Hebah in it, Lowe wrote. The cameras captured Hebah both outside and inside the building. While inside, he went through drawers and took things, the document adds.
The affidavit says Holladay went back to the highway to find the man and located him within the hour — since a Shoshoni Police Department officer headed north on his way to work had encountered Hebah and was speaking to him.
The manager was still going through video recordings with deputies when Holladay brought Hebah back to the business, and the manager was able to go outside and identify the man, he recalled.
‘What’s In The Bucket?’
Also that morning, the manager sent his rig crew out to the barrow ditches to look for the many keys that had been taken to see if the men lost any of them out in the rural area as they fled.
One employee pulled into the business property and announced that “there was one guy walking down the road with a bucket” said the manager.
He drove down in his red F-350 pickup to confront the man with the bucket. That was a green, 3-gallon Menard’s bucket that the burglars had reportedly found in the shop and used to gather numerous vehicle keys before they fled.
“What’s in the bucket?” the manager demanded of the man on the road, later identified as Pino.
“You don’t want to know,” answered Pino, according to the manager’s account.
“Yeah, I do want to know,” the manager countered.
The man with the bucket pulled out his .22-caliber pistol and raised it at the manager, the latter said.
The manager threw his truck in reverse and hammered the gas pedal, hoping he wouldn’t hit anything as he fled. He also ducked.
“As soon as I ducked, the bullet come through; he shot through the window,” he said. Where the bullet entered, “Should have been my face.”
Because it was only a .22-caliber, the manager believes the bullet fragmented when it hit the window, and only a shard of it “cauterized” his upper arm. Beads of lead embedded in his sweatshirt.
“I don’t know, it’s kind of weird looking,” he said with a laugh, speaking of his wound.
The sheriff’s office would later report that no one was shot directly, but that the manager was wounded by shrapnel.
The manager said he started calling other people in the area to warn them about the shooter. He also stopped off at a day care down the road and urged its operators to lock their doors, he recalled.
A sheriff’s deputy told the manager to get an ambulance, “but I wasn’t hurt bad,” he said.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
