Firearms thief sentenced to local jail Prison sentence suspended

COEUR d’ALENE — A 22-year-old Coeur d’Alene man who told police he worked for a cartel selling stolen property in California and Canada will spend four months in jail for stealing his girlfriend’s family’s firearms.

Joel Michael Dunn was sentenced Thursday in First District Court to serve local jail time for two counts of grand theft, one count of burglary, one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one count of petit theft.

District Judge Richard S. Christensen said he took into consideration statements from the victim, who asked the court be lenient with Dunn, and from a Christian-based recovery group where Dunn has enrolled since his arrest in April.

Dunn, who has previous felony burglary and forgery convictions, was accused in the theft of six firearms from a camper where the guns were being stored. Even though Dunn was shown selling the guns on a Pawn 1 video, receiving $1,560 for the firearms, he denied the accusations.

Dunn told police he had “‘run a lot of drugs’ and was either currently or had been recently in the employ of the ‘cartel,’” Sgt. Joe Jovik wrote in his report. “Dunn claimed in the near past he had been earning $40,000 per month working for the ‘cartel,’ and he recently earned $18,000 by ‘running’ to Canada.”

Dunn appeared in court Thursday on crutches from falling off a roof at a job site. He told Christensen he had been heavily involved in drugs at the time of the thefts, but has been sober and clean since his arrest.

Christensen sentenced Dunn to seven years behind bars on three of the felonies and to five years in prison for possession of a firearm by a felon, but suspended the sentence.

He ordered Dunn to serve 180 days in jail, complete 150 hours of community service and be on supervised probation for four years.

“That is a longer probation than normal, but you’ve earned all of that,” Christensen said.

He would impose the sentence if Dunn reoffended while on probation, Christensen said.

“Society seeks retribution,” the judge said.