2 Get Probation for Digging Up Relics
Three men have been ordered to serve one year of probation and perform 100 hours of community service work after they excavated two archeological sites where Indian artifacts were buried.
Steven George Averill, Michael John Arnold and Sterling Hallis Moffett, all of El Cajon, were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff on Monday. Huff also ordered the three men to write a letter to the court and to the Indian tribes affected that explains where the artifacts were dug up.
Additionally, the judge ordered them to pay $1,551 restitution to the Forest Service office in Rancho Bernardo.
The men pleaded guilty June 8 to violating the Archeological Resources Protection Act. The trio was arrested by Forest Service personnel in the Cleveland National Forest. The archeological sites were formerly inhabited by the Indians of the Diegueno and Kumeyaay tribes.
When they were taken into custody on Sept. 7, 1991, authorities discovered “hundreds of pieces of Indian artifacts in buckets, hidden in the bushes,” according to Asst. U.S. Atty. Melanie K. Pierson.
In addition to bone and pot fragments, a pipe was unearthed by the men, Pierson said.
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