Strad thief gets seven years
mainSalah Salahadyn, 42, was sentenced today for the theft of a violin from Frank Almond, concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, who was attacked with a stun gun in the assault. The violin, valued at $5m, was missing for nine days.
Salahadyn received 7 years jail time and five more on extended supervision.
His accomplice has already gone to jail.
Harsh and unfair. People who commit serious violent crimes get shorter sentences. It’s only a violin. Nobody was injured.
Sentenced this way because he is poor and black!
Excuse me, but Frank Almond was injured because this callous thief used a stun gun on him, but of course he was the victim so presumably to you he doesn’t matter. If you don’t consider being shot with a stun gun violent crime perhaps you try it out. The experience might change your mind. You could also look up on the number of people injured or killed as a result of stun guns, but I doubt you will do either of these things somehow.
Personally I could not care about if this thief had been rich and purple or came from the planet Mars. His colour and background make no difference to me. He deserved his 7 year prison term because of the nature of his attack.
No, I don’t know what a stun gun is. I have assumed it doesn’t put a bullet inside the victim but instead momentarily paralyzes the person in some way. I have also assumed that Frank Almond recovered fully, at least physically.
At the time of the capture of the two criminals, Mr. Almond clarified on these pages some of the horror of his experience. I read related reports about the men, and something that became obvious was that one was much less culpable than the other, having merely supplied the stun gun. Both men were and are from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The white and disabled South African who shot and killed his wife behind their bathroom door received a five-year sentence, generally viewed as fair.
As has been already mentioned, the nature of the attack could have had far graver consequences for Mr Almond, especially considering that the car-park was icy, dark, and largely deserted. Moreover, the evidence clearly indicates that the theft, far from being an opportunistic idiocy committed on the spur of the moment that happened to hit a Strad, was obsessively planned for years in advance. It was clearly more than “only a violin” to the thief. Society will be far safer with this person behind bars for a substantial period of time (many would contend that Pistorius’s sentence is on the short side).
Per the article, his guilty plea buys freedom for his girlfriend who assisted him in the crime. If you average the two out it seems like a less substantial penalty.