Courts and Crime

    Though sentencing guidelines called for no jail time, a former teacher’s aide at Liberty High School received a 90-day active sentence on an indecent liberties conviction related to charges filed last September.
    Michael Dean Robertson, 42, received a five-year sentence for his conviction—with all but the 90 days suspended—following a no contest plea to the charge entered in February. He was sentenced last Friday, with the judge stating that any crime of this type against a child demanded active jail time.

    A Bedford man with a history of charges relating to setting fires has been charged with starting a blaze that destroyed his mother’s home Monday.
    Bedford County Sheriff’s investigators have changed Darrell Bruce Orange, 53, with arson of a residence at 1071 Murray Hollow Road in Thaxton. He lived in the residence with his mother. He is being held in the Bedford Adult Detention Center on no bond.

A local pizza store owner, charged with failing to pay local restaurant taxes, has been found guilty on one count of misdemeanor failing to pay food and beverage taxes to the city of Bedford.

    A man accused of carrying out a water purification system scam in multiple localities pleaded guilty Tuesday morning in Bedford County Circuit Court, to three counts of construction fraud.

    Larry Eugene Foster, 46, was picked up by the U.S. Marshal’s Service in Nashville, Tenn., in August and has been in custody in Bedford County since last fall.