The man accused of robbing the Sunset Curve BP station in Weyauwega with a crowbar is heading to prison, again.
Judge Raymond Huber sentenced Justin M. Baumgardt, 29, formerly of Waupaca, to six years in state prison and four years of extended supervision after accepting his plea of no contest to robbery by the use of force.
Shortly before 6 a.m. Sunday, July 1, Baumgardt entered the gas station and threatened to kill the clerk if she did not open the cash register and the safe.
According to the criminal complaint, the clerk told Detective Sgt. James Gorman with the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Department that a man wearing a pink, hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses entered the store with his arm over his face and the hood over his head. He held what appeared to be a crowbar and ordered her down on the floor.
The man continued to yell and swear at her and told her he would kill her if she did not do as he ordered.
After stealing hundreds of dollars from the store, the man left and the clerk called 911.
The clerk was not able to describe the suspect’s face. However, video surveillance cameras at the station provided images of a man between 5-foot-8-inches and 6-feet tall, weighing between 170 to 200 pounds, with a thin build in his early to mid 20s. The images also showed that he had short brown hair with a bald spot at the crown and a short trimmed beard on the jaw line.
Gorman recognized the suspect in the video due to Baumgardt’s many prior contacts with local law enforcement.
From December 2001 to August 2012, the Waupaca County district attorney’s office filed 16 felony complaints and eight misdemeanor complaints against Baumgardt. His numerous prior convictions include burglary, theft, auto theft, forgery uttering, delivery of cocaine and failure to report to jail.
In January 2008, Baumgardt was sentenced to two years in state prison. In June 2010, he was convicted of misdemeanor theft for a crime committed in December 2009.
Baumgardt was convicted of battery in April 2011 and sentenced to five months in jail.
Baumgardt was also recently convicted of forgery uttering. Charges of theft from an August 2011 incident, of disorderly conduct and bail jumping from a March 2012 incident, and of disorderly conduct from an August 2012 incident were dismissed and read into the record.
Since March 2012, Baumgardt has spent 454 days in county jail.