Man freed to pay restitution

By Linda Cicoira

A Nassawadox man was given suspended prison terms Thursday in Accomack Circuit Court so he could get a job and start paying back the more than $30,000 he owes in restitution for damages he caused to chicken houses and other property last year.

Thirty-nine-year-old Jonathan Gene Mears, of Silas Court, pleaded guilty to destroying Benny F. Hall Sr.’s Temperanceville property, which made his chicken houses inoperable, stealing property belonging to Billy Moore in Parksley, and possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. The first offenses occurred in October 2024, while the third happened in April.

In accordance with a plea agreement, he was sentenced to five years for the first charge, with all but the time served suspended. For the Billy Moore theft, he was given a suspended 10-year term. Mears received a suspended 15-year term for the drug charge and another 12- month suspended sentence for misdemeanor trespassing. A count of carrying a concealed weapon was not prosecuted.

The terms were set to run consecutively. He will be on 15 years of good behavior and five years of supervised probation.

“The first thing you have to do is quit stealing,” said Judge Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. “The next time you come in here, the hammer is going to fall. Violate by not making restitution, you go right back there, he said of incarceration.