Defendant attributes long criminal record to heroin

A man whose vanity license plate tag affixed to his getaway car led to his capture after robbing a New Kent convenience store must serve five years, 10 months in prison.

Kevin Bernard Page, 31, of 17474 King William Avenue in King William County, told Judge Thomas B. Hoover he was ill due to his heroin addiction when he drove to the Bottoms Bridge Shell convenience store on Route 60 last Sept. 19, walked inside, and grabbed $836 from the store’s register when the lone clerk on duty opened the cash drawer. The getaway car he was diving, however, belonged to his mother and bore the license tag EM PAGE.

A customer entering the store made note of the license plate. The car was later recovered in Richmond. Page was arrested four days later in King William as he walked toward the sheriff’s office there to surrender.

A New Kent Circuit Court grand jury indicted Page for robbery. As part of a plea deal on Dec. 15 in circuit court, Page pleaded guilty to an amended charge of grand larceny from a person.

At Page’s March 6 sentencing in New Kent Circuit Court, court probation officer Jeff Seeley, who interviewed Page as part of a pre-sentence report, said the defendant had been out of prison for about four months when the offense in New Kent occurred. Page served six years for a similar crime in Hanover County, Seeley said.

“How did you think you’d get away with it?” Hoover asked the defendant after hearing Seeley’s testimony and reviewing the trial account concerning the vanity tag.

“I was sick. I wasn’t even thinking about it,” Page told the judge. “I was dope sick. Excuse me, I was heroin sick.”

The defendant told the court he got hooked on drugs in his teens and never stopped using heroin, even while behind bars in state prison. He said he traded cigarettes for heroin while in the prison yard.

Seeley, meanwhile, noted that Page comes from a family with strong ties and siblings that have gone on to highly successful careers.

“You said you had a spectacular upbringing,” Hoover said to Page. “What happened to you?”

“I guess you can call me the black sheep of the family,” the defendant answered. “I got hooked.”

Page told the judge he has never received formal drug treatment, but has become an advisor in a program at Henrico Jail East. He said that if he doesn’t get help, he could soon be six feet under.

“You’re right,” Hoover told the defendant. “You don’t see any heroin addicts over age 50. They’re all dead from overdoses.”

“I’m tired of getting high and spending my money on drugs and having no money the next day,” Page said. “I’m doing this to myself and my family and it hurts.”

Prosecutor Randy Del Rossi, noting Page’s long criminal history, recommended a sentence exceeding the high end of the state’s guidelines.

“I’ve listened to him speak and he’s very sympathetic… but he puts heroin addiction above anything else, “ Del Rossi said in asking for an active term of 10 years.

Defense attorney Katherine Giannasi argued that her client had never undergone valuable drug treatment until recently. She defined the vanity tag episode as a cry for help, and asked the court to impose sentence at the guidelines’ lower end.

But Hoover opted for the high end, imposing 20 years with all but the five years, 10 months suspended. The judge also ordered Page placed in a facility that offers therapeutic drug treatment.

In an unrelated case on March 6, Christopher Aaron Moore, 20, of 6315 Farmer’s Drive, Barhamsville, pleaded guilty to one count of Oxycodone possession. He was about to be released on bond until sentencing is held next month, but a urine screening blocked the move. Moore tested positive for opiates, whereupon Hoover revoked bond and placed the defendant in jail.

A New Kent deputy arrested Moore last Aug. 19 after finding a plastic drink straw containing Oxycodone residue in the defendant’s pocket. The incident took place at Moore’s home where the deputy had gone to arrest the defendant on a failure to appear in court charge.