Nurses’ Assistant Purloins Wedding Rings, Sentenced to Five Years in Prison

By Doug Barry | September 26, 2012 | 2:00pm

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Things tend to disappear in Roanoke, which probably makes the community’s legal apparatus all the more sensitive to instances of theft. A former nurses’ assistant has been sentenced to five years in prison after she was found guilty on Tuesday of stealing four wedding bands from patients she helped care for at the Virginia Veterans Care Center. During a tearful testimony, Ashley Michelle Sweeney explained to a judge that she’d taken the rings to help pay for a drug habit, because that’s the only way this story could get any more depressing.

Prosecutors say another aide at the nursing home helped Sweeney sell the rings to pawn shops. Sweeney was initially sentenced to 24 years in prison (which seems, I dunno, a little harsh?), but had all but five years of her sentence suspended. As part of her sentence, she can never work as a nurse or nurses’ assistant again.