NEWPORT — A Claremont man who was an accomplice in a violent home invasion in 2023 will serve jail time under a plea deal that also resulted in dropping two felony charges.
Kody Bardin, 31, will serve 10 months in Sullivan County House of Corrections in Unity after pleading guilty to being an accomplice in a burglary, according to court documents. He was also sentenced to three-and-half to seven years, all suspended with conditions, on a guilty plea of attempted burglary entered in Sullivan County Superior Court on Tuesday.
Two counts of criminal threatening with a deadly weapon, each punishable by a prison sentence of three-and-half to seven years, were dismissed under the plea deal.
Bardin, 29 at the time, along with Loren Richardson, then 34, forced their way through the porch door of a ground-floor apartment on Walnut Street in downtown Claremont in the early evening on July 31, 2023.
The motive for the duo’s break-in was never stated but the intruders and the apartment dwellers knew each other, according to the police affidavit in support of the charges.
At the time, Bardin and Richardson resided in different units at the same address on Pleasant Street.
Once inside the Walnut Street apartment, one of the intruders knocked down and pistol-whipped a female occupant who had come to the porch door in response to the intruders’ knock.
A male occupant in the apartment told police that when he saw Richardson with a gun in his raised hand he shot at the armed intruder in self defense.
After the shooting Richardson and Bardin fled the scene, leaving a trail of blood on the street outside.
Richardson appeared later that same day at Valley Regional Hospital critically wounded with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He was subsequently flown to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon for further treatment.
Both Bardin and Richardson were indicted on charges the following October, a little more than two months after the break-in. The shooter was not charged.
In July of this year, Richardson, now 37, pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary and is now serving his sentence in Sullivan County jail. Like Bardin, Richardson’s plea deal included dismissal of two counts of criminal threatening with a deadly weapon.
Earlier, a Claremont woman, who was 21 at the time she cleaned blood stains from the car used to drive Richardson to the hospital, pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of hindering apprehension or prosecution of a crime. She was handed down a deferred six-month jail sentence in Sullivan County Superior Court.
