El Toro Youth, 18, Given Year for Receiving Stolen Property

One of five El Toro teen-agers allegedly involved in a south county burglary ring pleaded guilty Friday to felony charges of receiving stolen property.

Michael Shawn Ellis, 18, was sentenced to one year in County Jail by Superior Court Judge James R. Franks II at the South Orange County Courthouse.

Ellis and four other teen-agers were arrested in November as suspects in a wave of burglaries in Mission Viejo and El Toro. Ellis has been in custody since his arrest because he had been on parole from the California Youth Authority.

His attorney, Public Defender E. Robert Goss Jr., said he didn’t know what Ellis had been charged with as a minor.

Ellis--who also has an outstanding charge of assault and battery--was convicted Friday of possessing stolen property, including guns, hand-carved pipes, jewelry and a television. His alleged partners in the crime spree also were scheduled for a pretrial hearing in the south county court Friday.

Halem Paball Baker, Lori Ann Camu and Gary Harold Hile, each 18, appeared before Municipal Judge Richard D. Hamilton, but he continued their pretrial hearing until Jan. 22.

Thomas Eugene Anthony, 19, of El Toro, did not appear in court. Baker’s attorney, M. Joseph Heneghan, told the court that he had seen Anthony at the courthouse earlier in the day and said there must have been a misunderstanding about the time of his pretrial hearing.

The judge issued an arrest warrant and authorized $10,000 bail to assure Anthony’s appearance at the Jan. 22 hearing.

Hile’s attorney, James S. Sweeney, and Heneghan said before the hearing that the defendants need time to decide how they were going to plead. A preliminary hearing in the case also is scheduled for Feb. 2.

According to court documents, Sheriff’s Department investigators recovered more than $20,000 worth of stolen property--including guns, television sets and jewelry--inside the defendants’ apartments, linking them to 12 burglaries reported in October and November in the El Toro and Mission Viejo areas.

Sheriff’s deputies were tipped off by an informant, according to police reports filed in court. The informant asked for confidentiality because of a fear of retaliation.

Hile and Anthony had been sharing a room in a trailer at Kimberly Gardens Trailer Park in El Toro, where sheriff’s deputies said they found some of the stolen property. Hile is charged with possessing a stolen pistol, holster, compact disc player and a lock pick; Anthony with possessing a stolen compact disc player, locksmith tools and locksmith books.

According to court documents, Ellis was planning to move into a Ridge Route Road apartment with Baker and Camu, who are engaged to be married.

The couple are charged with possessing stolen guns, jewelry, silverware, a videocassette recorder and a television set recovered by police in their apartment. Baker told police that Ellis had given him a .22-caliber pistol for his birthday, court records state.