Sergeant gets six years confinement

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Andre Thacker
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
An Air Force staff sergeant will spend six years in confinement, be demoted to airman basic and be dishonorably discharged for stealing four laptop computers and two personal data assistant devices from U.S. Central Command last year.

A military judge sentenced Staff Sgt. Sheridan Ferrell II on Jan. 30 to seven years on two charges of larceny and two charges of dereliction of duty. The sentence was reduced to six years because Ferrell had a pre-trial agreement with prosecutors in exchange for his guilty plea. The sentence is subject to approval from the convening authority, who is Maj. Gen. George N. Williams, 21st Air Force commander.

Ferrell pleaded guilty Jan. 29 to stealing four laptops and two PDAs containing sensitive information from CENTCOM last summer. An additional charge of stealing a computer hard drive was dropped in exchange for his guilty plea.

When two computers were noticed missing Aug. 2, security here clamped down and more than 50 agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations swarmed over the base in the largest investigation in MacDill's history.

A week after the laptops disappeared, the investigation led OSI agents to Ferrell's residence, where they discovered the missing computers and two additional laptop computers taken from the secure compartmentalized information facility at CENTCOM. They also discovered the two PDAs.