The former town resident accused of committing the Newtown Savings Bank and Game Stop store robberies and a slew of home burglaries across town probably won't face those charges any time soon, according to officials.
On Friday, Shane Parsons, 36, who remains incarcerated at New Haven Correctional Center on $400,000 bail, had a case that involved three sets of charges from three different municipalities continued to August 26, according to officials at the state Superior Court in Waterbury.
The court system routinely grants continuances for various reasons – including to accommodate a lawyer's schedule – and it was unclear what the reason was in Parsons' case.
The continuance also means that for now, a separate arrest warrant charging Parsons with the June 17 Newtown Savings Bank robbery, the June 13 Game Stop heist and six home burglaries from March through May will have to wait, officials said.
As long as Parsons remains in the custody of the state Department of Corrections and has an ongoing court case in Waterbury, Newtown police won't have an opportunity to serve him with an arrest warrant in connection with the crimes he is accused of committing in town because he is out of their jurisdiction, Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe has said.
At Parsons' last court appearance in Waterbury, Naugatuck served an arrest warrant charging Parsons with the June 15 Naugatuck Savings Bank robbery while Middlebury served an arrest warrant charging him with the June 12 home burglary. Waterbury police, who were the ones to finally track down Parsons, had already charged him with robbing the Webster Bank in their city on June 17.
But Newtown did not because the Waterbury court was out of its geographic area, Kehoe said, adding that if Parsons had appeared at the state Superior Court in Danbury, they would have been able to serve the warrant there.
