Former Delaware Cop gets six years in poker heist case

Tuesday in Dover, a former Delaware State Trooper, HyunJin Kim, was sentenced to serve six years in jail for his role in setting up a robbery of a poker game in a Kent County country club.

Another man, Timothy M. Longstreth of Stone Harbor, New Jersey, received a five year sentence for his part in the robbery. The getaway driver, Manuel L. Gonzalez of Glassboro, New Jersey, was handed a one year sentence that was then withdrawn for technical reasons. A hearing on June 9th is scheduled for his resentencing.

Kim, an Iraq war veteran who had been a trooper for 2 1/2 years, was led into the second-floor courtroom in shackles. He stood before Superior Court President Judge James T. Vaughn Jr. and apologized for what he had done.
“There’s no excuse for this, and I take full responsibility for my action,” Kim said as family members sobbed quietly.
“Every day that goes by, I feel guilt for what I have done,” Kim said, asking Vaughn for “a second chance” so he can put the pieces of his life back together once he is released from prison. “There is no doubt in my mind that I can be a productive member of society again.”
Longstreth also took responsibility for his actions, apologizing to the victims, to the state and to his family.
“I make no excuses for what I did. I understand what it means to reap what you sow.”
Kim, Longstreth and Gonzalez were among six men who robbed a weekly poker game at Wild Quail Golf & Country Club of $10,000.
Kim, described by Deputy Attorney General Christina Showalter as “the mastermind" of the heist, was the group's inside man -- he was playing in the 12-man card game when the others burst into the room.
The shotgun-toting robbers ordered the card players, including Kim, to lie on the floor. Their heads were covered with red pillowcases and they were robbed of $10,000.
Two of the victims were pistol-whipped -- and one of them told Vaughn on Tuesday that they, the victims, have been something of an afterthought as the judicial process has taken its course.
During the robbery, "grown men were wetting themselves," said Harry Thomas, the club's executive director. When his head was shrouded with a pillowcase, Thomas said, he wondered if he was about to be shot in the back of the head.
"I think the victims are sort of getting lost in this situation," he said.
Showalter said the robbers "gave little regard to the fact that they were inflicting terror" on the victims, and that Kim's six-year sentence "is fair, in some ways it's almost too fair."
But she credited Kim with providing invaluable assistance in identifying the other culprits -- although she said the prosecution had him dead to rights.
Kim was identified as a suspect by a police co-worker who saw him in surveillance photos from the Wal-Mart store in Camden. Surveillance cameras caught Kim standing next to a man who paid for pillowcases matching those used at the robbery scene.
All three sentences Tuesday were the result of plea bargains. Two other defendants have pleaded guilty and were sentenced, while another rejected a plea bargain and was convicted.
As a former police officer who testified against his co-defendants, Kim likely will be placed in protective custody or transferred to a prison in another state.

News Added: 27 May, 2009

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