Sentence revoked for getaway driver
courtesy photo
Thomas A. Lozeau III
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POLSON – A 30-year-old Ronan man was sentenced to 12 years in the Department of Corrections last week after his probation was revoked.
Thomas Alfred Lozeau III was convicted on Sept. 12, 2006 of being an accessory to a bank robbery. His original sentence was 15 years in DOC with 12 suspended.
According to a court document, Lozeau was the driver of a getaway vehicle after another man, William James Gopher, robbed Ronan State Bank in Pablo on Aug. 12, 2005. Tribal officers Don Bell and Bill Dupuis later found $7,000 on each of the men: a total of $14,000.
According to a probation officer’s report, Lozeau tested positive for opiates (without a prescription) in March 2014 and did not report to the officer in July 2014. In addition, he was fired from a job in July 2014 and the probation officer said she found empty beer cans on Lozeau’s porch.
County attorney Steve Eschenbacher and defense attorney Lael Gabrian agreed that Lozeau should be sentenced to seven years in DOC and be given credit for five years of “good time” while he was on probation.
Judge Kim Christopher disagreed. She noted that she had previously warned Lozeau that he would be sent to the Montana State Prison for 12 years if he violated probation, but compromised and sentenced him to DOC with the possibility that he could be eventually allowed to report to a pre-release center and later released.
Christopher said giving Lozeau a seven-year sentence would be counter productive and not appropriate. “I can’t give him ‘good time’ on a second reported violation,” she said, noting an earlier probation violation in October 2014 had been dismissed.
She said Lozeau had been given a conditional release from DOC in 2008 and has a case for dependency and neglect pending in tribal court.
Eschenbacher called probation officer Kim Leibenguth to the witness stand. She testified that Lozeau, who was 18 at the time of the daylight heist, did “fairly well” for five years on probation and was not a threat to the community. However she noted that she had only been handling Lozeau’s case for one year.
Gopher, 39, is currently serving time in the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison with 25 suspended for robbery on Nov. 30, 2005. He received suspended 20-year sentences for each of two assault with a weapon convictions and a suspended 10-year sentence for intimidation.
According to a court document, Gopher threatened to detonate a bomb contained in a black case while at Ronan State Bank. It was later reported that the bomb was fake.
Gopher tried to withdraw his guilty pleas in 2011, but district and state supreme courts both ruled that he had missed a one-year deadline from the date of the judgment.
