A robber who forced two tourists to strip naked because he was annoyed they didn’t have cash to give him was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison on Wednesday.
Robber who forced tourists to strip naked on Portland's Burnside Bridge gets 19 years http://t.co/GS0YzybrdA pic.twitter.com/qJvsg1kgT2
— The Oregonian (@Oregonian) July 30, 2015
Oregonlive.com reports:
Judge Gregory Silver told James Wooten that he could have just “moved on” after netting little from the robbery. Instead, the 27-year-old assaulted the two tourists from California and ordered them hand over their clothes simply to humiliate them.
That, the judge said, deserves far more than the minimum 7½ years required by Oregon law.
“I don’t know why you did that,” Silver told Wooten. “But it was senseless.”
Portland police responded to a call shortly after 2 a.m. Oct. 3, 2014 on the west end of the Burnside Bridge to find two nude men covering their groin areas.
They told police Wooten and an accomplice ran toward them and demanded they empty their pockets at knifepoint.
During Wooten’s sentencing hearing Wednesday, prosecutor Shoen said that criminal thinking drove Wooten’s behavior, not mental illness.