Cloverdale teen sentenced after robbery plea

Thursday, November 26, 2015

SPENCER -- An 18-year-old Cloverdale man was sentenced Tuesday for his part in an Owen County home invasion last spring.

Coleton James Giberson appeared in the Owen Circuit Court I for a sentencing hearing in front of Judge Lori Thatcher-Quillen on a charge of robbery, a level 5 felony.

Giberson was charged with the offense following a joint investigation conducted by the Det. Erich Teuton of the Owen County Sheriff's Department and Investigator Daniel McBride with the Owen County Prosecutor's Office.

According to the probable cause affidavit filed in the case, a 911 call was made to the Owen County Dispatch Center in the early morning hours of May 25.

The victim reported he had been beaten by one or more masked individuals during an early morning home invasion at his residence.

The victim reported that one individual possessed a handgun during the incident and that the beating caused him to lose consciousness.

After the victim awakened, the suspects were gone and he noticed that a number of items had been taken from his residence.

Owen County Prosecuting Attorney Donald VanDerMoere, a former Putnam County Prosecutor's Office investigator, said ultimately the investigation led officers into Putnam County where they located evidence of the crime and several suspects.

In total, five individuals were detained on various charges related to the early morning home invasion.

Giberson, who was the last of the five co-defendants to plead guilty, was sentenced to six years in the Department of Correction with three years executed and the balance suspended to probation.

VanDerMoere advised that Giberson must serve 75 percent of this sentence under Indiana's new sentencing law.

Already in court previously in the case have been:

-- Mercedes Dawn Caito, 18, Cloverdale, sentenced to five years at the Department of Correction with two years executed and the balance suspended to probation.

-- Dakota Cary Cutshaw, 17, Greencastle, charged as an adult. He pled guilty recently.

-- Two other juvenile boys -- one age 15 from Greencastle and one age 15 from Poland -- have already been adjudicated in juvenile court as delinquent children.

At her sentencing hearing in August, Caito confirmed that one of the boys possessed a firearm during the encounter and that she and the young men stole various items from the northern Owen County home, injuring the homeowner in the process.

She also admitted that in the aftermath of the robbery, the five defendants traveled to a Putnam County campground to party.

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