US soldier Gordon Black, convicted in Vladivostok for threatening to kill and stealing, told in an interview that he did not expect to get jail time and thought he would return home.
In June, the court sentenced Black to three years and nine months in a general regime colony for threatening to kill his girlfriend in Vladivostok and stealing 10,000 rubles from her. The prosecutor asked the defendant to be sentenced to four years and eight months in a penal colony. The defence asked to acquit him on all charges. Black himself stated that he fully supports the position of the defence and refused to make a last word. In August, the Primorsky Krai Court left Black’s sentence unchanged.
‘Of course. I tried by any means to reduce the sentence. I didn’t expect to be in prison at all. I thought I would just go home,’ the American soldier said when asked if he had hoped for an acquittal.
Black, who came to Vladivostok in April to visit his girlfriend after meeting her in Korea, during an argument, according to prosecutors, ‘forcibly grabbed the girl by the neck, which she perceived as a real threat to her life,’ then stole 10,000 rubles from her wallet.
The serviceman, according to NBC News, was a member of the US contingent in South Korea and travelled to Russia on his own initiative.