Burglar receives 10-year prison sentence

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GREENFIELD — A Knightstown man who stole weapons from a local police officer’s home before fleeing to South Dakota and leading officers there on a high-speed chase will spend 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to burglary charges.

Korey Sawicki, 26, pried open a back door of a Hancock County sheriff’s deputy’s New Palestine home in late October, taking the officer’s badge, two of his personal handguns and other items, investigators said.

He was found days later in Rapid City, South Dakota, where he was arrested after a high-speed police chase that ended in a crash.

Sawicki pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary as a Level 4 felony Thursday in Hancock County Superior Court 1.

Police believe Sawicki is responsible for a number of break-ins around Hancock County, all within a few weeks of one another in October 2015. The charges he faced stem from four separate criminal cases accusing him of burglary and theft, court records show.

Sawicki’s guilty plea came as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors; he pleaded guilty in two of those cases in exchange for the remaining two being dismissed, officials said in court.

Sawicki and his girlfriend, Janelle Perkins, 28, of Greenfield — who is serving a six-year sentence for her involvement in the break-in of the deputy’s home — ransacked a sheriff’s deputy’s home in the 2700 block of County Road 425W in New Palestine.

They broke in through a locked side door near the garage, prosecutors said, and made off with handguns, a knife, a chainsaw and a television.

Around the same time, a Greenfield man reported his home in the first block of Walnut Street had been broken into. Two televisions and two vacuum cleaners were stolen, prosecutors said.

Police found a McDonald’s receipt at the man’s home and connected the purchases to Sawicki and Perkins, prosecutors said.

Additionally, trail cameras outside the deputy’s home caught the couple driving away in a black Jeep Liberty, which police believe was stolen from another home in Greenfield, investigators said.

After investigators posted the images captured on the trail cameras, tips flooded in about the couple, police said.

Perkins was sentenced in April to serve two years in prison and four years on probation after pleading guilty to a Level 4 burglary charge.

Sawicki pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of the same charge. He will spend 10 years in the Department of Correction. He did not speak during his sentencing hearing Thursday.