Rejected lover guilty of trashing man's home

Nancy Drury Duncan

Anger at being rejected by the man she was seeing led Angela Cuce Sturgis and her 19-year-old son to go into her boyfriend’s trailer and destroy his property, said a circuit judge in a bench trial in Accomack County.

Sturgis, 38, and Isaiah Padgett were charged with burglary, grand larceny and destruction of property in connection with entering Sturgis' former boyfriend’s trailer located near the Mappsville flea market.

Nathan Wilkins testified he returned home at about 10 p.m. after an evening out with a female friend. He said he saw the pair, along with the woman’s underage  daughter, leaving the area near the back door of the trailer.

He called police and waited for the officer to arrive before going inside.

They found the back door broken. Once inside, they saw that several televisions and laptop computers were smashed. A 32-inch television was on the floor with a footprint on its broken screen, Wilkins said.

He told the court $500 was missing from his pants pocket in his closet and that the woman knew where he kept his money.

After hours of testimony and cross-examination by defense attorneys Theresa Bliss and Carl Bundick, Judge W. Revell Lewis III concluded it was Sturgis and her children who caused the damage.

“This case arises out of a situation where both were involved in a relationship,” he said, adding, “These types of relationships seem to cause people to get overly excited about things and unreasonable about things. They lash out in ways that are out of character for them. I believe they were there and went in and trashed it. They were very angry with him.”

Lewis said he found each of the two guilty of trespass and not breaking and entering; guilty of petty larceny and not grand larceny; and guilty of property destruction, also a misdemeanor. He allowed the pair to remain free on bond and ordered that a presentence investigation report be prepared.

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