After admitting to a string of burglaries that added up to thousands of dollars in losses for several Mankato area businesses, Jared Richard Attig was facing time in prison.

He cut a deal instead. On June 15, the day Attig reached a plea deal for 10 different crimes spanning from February through April, he was released from jail after spending about two months there. All 21-year-old Attig had to do to remain free was stay out of trouble, stay away from his criminal cohorts and show up for his sentencing July 29.

Eleven days later, he was behind bars again, this time in Iowa.

Police Chief Pat Conroy of Buffalo Center, Iowa, said he caught Attig and Tyler Thomas Clayton, also 21, lurking behind businesses in an alley there. Conroy arrested the men after they allegedly dropped a knapsack with a stolen drill inside.

Then Conroy, who said he had been watching the pair for several days, got a search warrant for Clayton’s house in Buffalo Center. Evidence linking Clayton to at least three other Iowa burglaries was found, Conroy said.

Several warrants for Clayton’s arrest also were issued Monday in Blue Earth County because he had been linked to the February burglary spree that had landed Attig in jail. Clayton was one of the people Attig had been specifically told to stay away from during his plea hearing before Blue Earth County District Court Judge Norbert Smith.

Attig’s trip to Iowa will likely nullify his plea deal, said Chris Rovney, assistant Blue Earth County attorney.

“I don’t feel we’re compelled to honor that plea agreement because he didn’t follow the conditions,” Rovney said.

He said one of the reasons for cutting a plea deal in the first place was the hope that Attig would get a job and start paying restitution to his victims. That’s not the focus now.

“They’re basically like a horde of grasshoppers going across the country ripping people off,” Rovney said. “That’s one of the hard things about these cases. They keep breaking the law and breaking the law.

“You want to get them on probation so you have a thumb on them, so they can pay their victims back. They can’t pay anyone back making $5 a day in prison, if they even make that much.”

Attig’s case is an example of what some victims see as a judicial system that doesn’t break the cycle of crime. Their businesses are broken into, law enforcement is called, arrests are made, and the suspects appear in court. A short time later, some say, the crooks are out again and their crimes continue.

Victim frustrations
Dean Hewitt, co-owner of Northtown Auto in Mankato and St. Clair, said he was surprised to hear Attig was out of jail and had been arrested again for burglary. Attig told Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Department deputies that he and Clayton broke into Hewitt’s building in St. Clair on Feb. 11.

Some of the windows in two pickups and a car were smashed, overhead lights were broken, tools and a computer were stolen, and a torch from the shop was used to cut open a pop machine. Attig and Clayton were later identified as the people selling tools taken from the business at a Mankato pawn shop.

“I looked at the report and all the stuff they did, all the damage that was done, and I thought they’d be in jail for awhile,” Hewitt said. “I thought months or longer.”