A 34-year-old man involved in an unusual robbery in Oak Harbor earlier this year received a lengthy prison sentence this week.
Oak Harbor police nabbed Oscar Sampedro in February after asking the community for help in locating him after an arrest warrant was issued.
He was located with the help of a tip on social media.
Prosecutors originally charged Sampedro in Island County Superior Court with both robbery and kidnapping. Monday, he pleaded guilty to the robbery charge as part of a plea bargain; Deputy Prosecutor Chris Anderson said it would have been difficult to prove the kidnapping charge at trial.
Judge Alan Hancock accepted the recommended sentence of five years and 10 months in prison. Sampedro had robbery convictions in California that increased the standard sentencing range.
Sampedro is known by many aliases, including Diablo, Little Smiley, Zoom Sampedro, Smiley, Smiley X and Oscar Sanchez, according to the Oak Harbor Police Department.
Sampedro, a man named Alex Irvin and a juvenile were accused of committing the robbery.
The 29-year-old victim reported that the incident occurred after he was hanging out with the two men and the juvenile at the Parkwood Manor trailer park during the night of Jan. 30 and the early morning of Jan. 31.
The victim agreed to go for a ride with Sampedro and the two others.
They eventually parked at the Family Bible Church, where Sampedro allegedly pulled out a gun and pointed it at the victim, telling him he had “bad news” for him, according to the police report written by Detective Mike Bailey.
The assailants bound his hands with zip ties. They stole his backpack, wallet, jacket, shoes and money.
The men tried to cut the restraints by burning them off with a torch-style lighter but stopped after they burned the victim. They twisted off the zip ties with a pliers, told the man to leave town and drove off.
Instead, he walked to his father’s house and called the police.
Irvin and the juvenile were also charged. Irvin is scheduled to enter a plea Monday and the juvenile will likely plea after that, according to Anderson.
