(Stillwater) — A Perkins man with a history of shoplifting in Cushing has been ordered to stand trial on a felony charge of shoplifting a T-shirt from the Dollar General Store in Perkins.
Jeremy Lewis Mills, 27, remains free on $2,500 bond pending his arraignment in trial court Friday before District Judge Donald Worthington.
If convicted of his latest shoplifting charge, Mills could be given as much as a five-year prison term, according to court documents filed by Payne County First Assistant District Attorney Tom Lee.
Mills was sent to prison boot camp in 2003 for violating his probation in a 2001 stolen credit card case by shoplifting in Cushing in 2002 and 2003, and uttering a forged instrument and making a false pawn declaration, both also in 2003 in Payne County, court records show.
Four months later when he returned from prison boot camp, Mills was given two concurrent 30-day jail terms for his two shoplifting charges and placed on four years’ probation on a deferred sentence on his forgery and false pawn declaration cases, court records show.
Perkins Police Chief Steve Hensley investigated Mills’ latest shoplifting case, which was reported by Dollar General Store general manager James Whitehead on Nov. 21, 2008, at about 9 a.m., according to an affidavit.
Six weeks later, when Mills was shown surveillance video from the Dollar General Store, Mills admitted to the police chief, “Yes, that is me stealing the T-shirt,” Hensley alleged in his affidavit.
“He said he was so sorry and it will never happen again,” Hensley wrote in his affidavit.
When the police chief asked him if he had taken anything else “because the video shows him putting something into his left pocket, Mr, Mills said he never took anything else, only the T-shirt.
“He stated he had either put his cell phone into his pocket or it might have been his billfold,” Hensley wrote in his affidavit.
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