By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A man arrested four times in one month in Centralia and Chehalis for crimes involving drugs and burglary was sentenced yesterday to 12 and half years in prison.
Daniel J. Miller, 49, was the individual who inadvertently led police to a Reynolds Avenue home where an officer found some of his own belongings among what was described as truckloads of stolen property and was also the man captured by a police dog after breaking into the Centralia Police Department’s training facility on Mellen Street on July 1.
A plea agreement finalized yesterday in Lewis County Superior Court included Miller pleading guilty to five felonies in exchange for some half dozen other potential charges being dropped, according to defense attorney Dan Havirco.
Miller was arrested June 3 when Centralia detective Sgt. Pat Fitzgerald spotted him driving in the south end of town and confiscated suspected methamphetamine, oxycodone, methadone and hydrocodone. Fitzgerald was on his way to court to get a search warrant signed in connection with the the stolen property investigation.
He was arrested the following weekend in Chehalis when an officer was investigating possible vehicle prowlers in the middle of the night behind an auto shop, according to Havirco.
A week later, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office arrested Miller again after a woman returned to her Graf Road home to find it ransacked.
Deputy Prosecutor Sarah Beigh said a co-defendant of Miller’s was sentenced on Friday to prison. It was immediately clear which case that involved.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter