A federal grand jury has indicted habitual offender Gilbert Kaipat for alleged possession of a gun and ammunition that he stole from the house of Superior Court Associate Judge Kenneth L. Govendo in Dandan.<\/p>\n
The indictment charged the 19-year-old Kaipat, also known as Cling Phillip Kaipat, with possession of a stolen firearm and possession of ammunition.<\/p>\n
According to the indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the NMI on Thursday, on Nov. 5, 2015, Kaipat unlawfully possessed a 9mm Smith and Wesson pistol, \u201cwhich had been shipped and transported in interstate commerce\u201d knowing that the firearm was stolen.<\/p>\n
The defendant also allegedly possessed a stolen hollow point 9mm round of ammunition.<\/p>\n
Kaipat is still under detention after failing to post a $50,000 cash bail in connection with the charges in local court over the burglary at Govendo\u2019s residence.<\/p>\n
At the preliminary hearing last month, Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho found probable cause to charge Kaipat with burglary, theft, and criminal mischief.<\/p>\n
Police said a surveillance camera at a store near Govendo\u2019s house led to the identification and arrest of Kaipat, who then guided investigators to a trash bin at a bakery where he hid the stolen gun. Detectives recovered the judge\u2019s police-issued 9mm pistol.<\/p>\n
Govendo was off-island when the incident happened. His wife discovered the burglary when she returned home from running errands.<\/p>\n
Kaipat is a habitual offender who has been arrested several times in the past for various violent crimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal grand jury has indicted habitual offender Gilbert Kaipat for alleged possession of a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8109,93,8675,257],"class_list":["post-216578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cling-phillip-kaipat","tag-district-court","tag-gilbert-kaipat","tag-nmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}