Kobe, an 8-month-old Chihuahua/wirehaired terrier, went missing from the Beard home in Baker City in July 2020.

BAKER CITY — A Baker City man who stole a family’s dog and left it to die outside town in 2020 has pleaded guilty to first-degree theft and animal abandonment.

Clayton Carter Hickman, 20, pleaded guilty on Jan. 18 in Baker County Circuit Court. He will serve 30 days in jail and 18 months of probation on the theft charge, which is a Class C felony.

A charge of second-degree criminal trespassing was dismissed in a plea agreement.

As part of the agreement, Hickman is required to write an apology letter to Stephanie Beard and her family, who owned the dog, Kobe, an 8-month-old Chihuahua/wirehaired terrier, and pay $100 in compensation to Beard.

Beard said that although she’s pleased the case has concluded, she is “disappointed with the plea offer Mr. Hickman received.”

“In our mind if a person chooses to violate the law they choose the consequences, but in this case, Mr. Hickman has succeeded in avoiding that,” Beard said on Friday, Jan. 27.

In a document included with the plea agreement, Rebecca Frolander, Wallowa County district attorney, who prosecuted Hickman, wrote that the victim,

Beard, did not agree with the terms of the agreement.

“She believes he should serve a longer jail sentence and is not being held accountable for his crimes and their impact on her family,” Frolander wrote.

She prosecuted the case because of potential conflicts of interest stemming from Beard’s job with Baker County.

Judge Matt Shirtcliff of Baker County Circuit Court also recused himself from the case.

Hickman was arrested in July 2020, when he was 18, and a grand jury indicted him on the theft, animal abandonment and trespassing charges on Aug. 27, 2020.

But Hickman was later ruled mentally unable to aid in his defense on the criminal charges. He was required to attend mental health counseling.

On Nov. 18, 2022, Judge Robert Raschio determined that Hickman was able to aid in his defense.

The Beards, with help from family and friends, searched for Kobe for more than a month in the summer of 2020.

Stephanie Beard and her husband, Luke, found Kobe’s remains on an embankment off Old Highway 30 southeast of Baker City on Sept. 2, 2020, while they were driving home from a day-long search in the Ebell Creek area.

Beard said that although she and her husband didn’t know Hickman well, they have helped other young people and agreed to let Hickman live in an outbuilding on their property temporarily in the spring of 2020, while he was completing his high school requirements.

Beard said they had no problems with Hickman until the day in July 2020 when Kobe went missing. Hickman had moved off the Beards’ property about a month earlier, she said.