The twin brothers who pleaded guilty to a hit-and-run over a week ago have also pleaded guilty to another criminal case involving burglary of a tourist van.
\nAnthony Laatman Mu\u00f1a and Vincent Laatman Mu\u00f1a, 23, pleaded guilty last Thursday to burglarizing a tourist van at the Grotto in Marpi.<\/p>\n
According to the plea agreement Anthony and Vicente Mu\u00f1a will get a suspended five-year imprisonment sentence each and will both be placed on probation for five years.<\/p>\n
The sentence will run concurrent with the sentence imposed in a separate case where both brothers received three years for attempted robbery and hit-and-run.<\/p>\n
Superior Court Associate Judge Wesley Bogdan presided. Vincent Mu\u00f1a was represented by court-appointed counsel Mark Scoggins, while Anthony Mu\u00f1a was represented by assistant public defender Jean Pierre Nogues. The government was represented by assistant attorney general Samantha Vickery.<\/p>\n
Both defendants will be jointly liable for payment of all restitution to the tour operator in an amount to be determined later.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Vicente Mu\u00f1a burglarized a van belonging to Saipan Adventures on April 25, 2018.<\/p>\n
Anthony Mu\u00f1a drove Vicente Mu\u00f1a to the Grotto, where Vicente Mu\u00f1a broke into the van by throwing a rock through the van\u2019s window and then took cell phones and personal items belonging to the tourists and the tour operator.<\/p>\n
When Vicente Mu\u00f1a got off the van, Anthony Mu\u00f1a drove him from the scene.<\/p>\n
After their arrest, the Mu\u00f1a brothers confessed their involvement in the burglary, and assisted police by giving information that led to other suspects who committed purse snatching-type robberies in Garapan.<\/p>\n
On June 8, 2018, the Mu\u00f1a brothers also attempted to snatch the purse of a tourist but were unsuccessful and ended up hitting her with their car instead.<\/p>\n
According to police, the Mu\u00f1a brothers were driving a rented vehicle down Beach Road on June 8, 2018, when they tried to snatch the purses of two female tourists who were walking along the shoulder of the road.<\/p>\n
Anthony Mu\u00f1a was the driver and Vicente Mu\u00f1a was in the car\u2019s front passenger seat.<\/p>\n
Upon seeing two female pedestrians\u2014Yao Yang and Yanbo Wu\u2014the Mu\u00f1a brothers agreed that Anthony Mu\u00f1a would drive close to the pedestrians and Vicente Mu\u00f1a would grab the purses from the tourists.<\/p>\n
Anthony Mu\u00f1a did a U-turn and then drove toward the tourists. Vicente Mu\u00f1a reached from the car and grabbed one of the tourist\u2019s purses but was unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
Anthony Mu\u00f1a hit the tourist with the car but did not stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The twin brothers who pleaded guilty to a hit-and-run over a week ago have also…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295798","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}