By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A repeat drug offender from Perkins has been given an eight-year prison term for breaking into a truck in Stillwater and being a felon in possession of a pistol — two months after he was released from jail on bond on charges of possessing methamphetamine, clonazepam and sublingual.
John Thomas Helfrick Jr., 29, was sentenced last week by District Judge Phillip Corley, who accepted his guilty plea to all charges including having drugs on Nov. 19, 2020, for which he was given a concurrent one-year jail term, court records show.
Helfrick’s latest arrested came at 4:55 pm on Jan. 11 in a parking lot on W. 6th Street — 15 minutes after Stillwater police were sent to the 300 block of S. Monroe on a report that a white man with a green hoody took a .45 caliber pistol from a pickup and was last seen southbound on Monroe, an affidavit said.
When Helfrick began running, “I immediately began chase and removed my ECW (taser) and told him he better not run or I was going to tase him. The male continued to run and I told him, ‘I’m going to f…. tase you, you better stop!’ I told him to get on the ground and the subject immediately dropped to the ground saying, ‘I’m sorry,"” Stillwater Police Officer Terry Low wrote in an affidavit.
“In his right front pocket, I removed a radar detector with the charger, and then I rolled him to his right side and removed a black Kimber .45 pistol from his front left pocket. I then removed the magazine and then made sure the gun was safe and removed a live round from the chamber,” the officer wrote in his affidavit.
According to court records and the state Department of Corrections, Helfrick had previously been convicted of burglary of a pickup in Stillwater in 2017 for which in 2018 he was given an eight-year prison term, but only served two years before his release on April 1, 2020.
Helfrick had also been convicted of concealing stolen property in Stillwater in 2016 for which he was originally given probation that was revoked in 2018 to a concurrent prison term. Helfrick had also been given probation for possessing the drug alprazolam in Stillwater in 2016 that was revoked in 2018 to a concurrent prison term; he also received a concurrent prison term after a 2013 drug possession conviction was revoked in 2018.
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