Women pleads to aiding husband in naval theft

By Linda Cicoira

A New Church woman admitted in U.S. District Court late last week to stealing high-voltage cables and hardware belonging to the U.S. Navy when she aided and abetted her husband, who was working as a civilian contractor at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for the Department of Defense.

Forty-seven-year-old Tyra Giddens, also known as Tyra Heath and Tyra Gunter, of Cutler’s Court Road, was charged with four crimes. A plea agreement allowed her to plead guilty to one count. Sentencing was set for Sept. 25. Her husband, 43-year-old Almount Gunter, is scheduled for sentencing next month.

Court record information stated Gunter told Giddens that he planned to salvage discarded scrap material from the base. She solicited a third person to assist him.

“The defendant turned a blind eye to her husband’s plan to steal valuable copper cables from the base,” the record said. As part of the crime, she rented the Ford F-250 for 23 days for $2,272.82. The rental was seized after her arrest. “Rental records revealed that over the course of nine months, from Dec. 1, 2022, through Sept. 9, 2023, the defendant rented 21 trucks for a total of 68 rental days, costing over $15,000.”

Gunter used his access to the supply yard more than 60 times during his off-work hours to take and recycle more than 60,000 pounds of mostly copper cables for which he was paid about $147,000, and another 7,100 pounds of materials, including high-voltage ship-to-shore cables, used to allow Navy ships to shut off engines, reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions.