Reno man gets 83 years for stalking DA, threats

RENO, Nev. (AP) - A man convicted of stalking Washoe County District Attorney Dick Gammick and other crimes was sentenced Wednesday to 83 years in prison for what a judge described as a "domestic terror spree."

Gary Craig Rosales, 49, made a tearful plea, asking District Judge Patrick Flanagan to "give me a break," the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

"The is so unfair. I don't deserve this," Rosales said.

Flanagan rejected defense lawyer Joseph Merkin's arguments that mental illness spurred Rosales' crimes. Merkin had asked that his client be placed on lifetime probation and ordered to undergo mental health counseling.

Rosales was convicted by a jury in February after his guilty plea and sentencing from 2007 was overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court.

Besides stalking the district attorney, he was convicted of shooting randomly into seven occupied homes, attempted murder of a janitor and criminal anarchy.

Photographs presented in court and reviewed by the judge showed spray-painted hate messages. One at a Reno preschool read, "All you kids must learn to hate punk cops." Others read, "Commit murder on cops tonight" and "I will kill Dick Gammick, the DA."

"Anyone could have been a victim ... this was domestic terrorism," Flanagan said.

"When people target law enforcement officers, they are targeting all of us," the judge said. "An attack on them is an attack on this country."

During the trial, Gammick testified that he received three calls at his office and home in 2004. He said the caller threatened his life, and once said he would die following the taping of a television news show.

Gammick said the man called him names, bragged about crimes and claimed he would never be caught. Most of the calls were recorded.

Gammick said he never met Rosales and that he had no dealings with his office.

Rosales was arrested in 2004 in Whittier, Calif., after the FBI tracked him as the user of a cellular phone that had been used to place collect calls to Gammick and his office.