Man Who Stole Augusta, Maine Police Cruiser Has Been Found Not Criminally Responsible

It was almost a year ago when we got word here at the radio station that an Augusta Police Department cruiser had been stolen.

The Kennebec Journal reported that an Augusta Police cruiser had been left unlocked and running outside of the police station on Union Street in Augusta when Kyle King approached the vehicle, climbed inside and took off.

Police gave chase to the stolen vehicle and eventually caught up with it at the Shaw's Plaza off of Western Avenue in Augusta. King had been using the police radio inside the car to talk to dispatch and was identifying himself as '047', according to police reports.

The Kennebec Journal says that King then exited the cruiser and followed a family into Shaw's where he had some kind of altercation with them. He then went back outside, got back into the cruiser, and turned on the siren and lights before accosting the same family again outside in the parking lot.

It was at this time that officers from Augusta Police were able to locate King and remove him from the vehicle before placing him in cuffs and taking him into custody.

Back in April of this year King had been found not competent enough to stand trial and was committed to Augusta's Riverview Psychiatric Center. The KJ reports that he admitted there to hopefully restore his mental competency so that he could take part in his own legal defense for the crimes committed.

It was later determined after evaluation by a phycologist that King 'did not appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions while stealing the cruiser'. It was determined that Kyle King had been suffering from delusions that reportedly affected his ability to know that what he was doing was wrong. King was then advised to take a plea deal that would commit his for an undermined amount of time to Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor, Maine, allowing him to avoid possible jail time.

Justice Michaela Murphy told King in part,

“You’d be held (at the psychiatric center) for treatment, for an indeterminate period of time. Nobody in this courtroom could tell you how long you will be there. It could be for a period of time that might actually exceed the amount of time if you were put in jail, if you were convicted at trial. Do you understand that?”

He implied that he did understand.

This is a developing story that we will keep updated as more information becomes available to us.