A 38-year old mother from Arvada spent her first night in jail on Thursday, August 29th.
Sentenced by Judge Jeffrey Pilkington of Jefferson County, Adrienne Stone received four years on probation and five months of work release for her felony conviction in July of menacing with a deadly weapon, in addition to six individual misdemeanors of child abuse and another count of going against a protection order.
While most first time offenders would meet a Jefferson County bail bonds agent and avoid any real jail time, Stone isn’t your typical first time offender. She was recently featured in an investigative report by Fox31 in Colorado, in which her oldest child, Nicholas, spoke publicly against her having custody of him and his seven younger siblings.
After an incident in which Stone threatened Nicholas with a kitchen knife, social workers removed Nicholas and his siblings from the home – but not due to her conviction. The children were removed because the home was condemned by code enforcement due to unhygienic conditions. Three months later, all the children were returned – save Nicholas, who’s had enough.
“She already had those same patterns of being an aggressive kind of person and then after she started doing drugs it all kind of went down really fast and it all kind of culminated when she pulled the knife on me,” he said.
It seems odd that the state didn’t have all of Stone’s children removed on July 10th – the day she was found guilty of child abuse. In fact, the judge himself only gave Stone jail time when he found that her behavior had affected her neighbors negatively, in addition to her eight children. Several of Stone’s neighbors reported her being both intimidating and irritable, frequently taunting them via social media. Additionally, Stone has had several restraining orders taken out on her.
Additionally, at the sentencing hearing on Thursday, prosecutors for Jefferson County revealed Arvada Police had been notified regarding Adrienne Stone over 51 times in the last three years.
Judge Pilkington said Stone clearly suffered from long standing anger management issues, and ordered her to undergo treatment for her mental health, in addition to drug abuse. Stone was once an opioid addict, and blames this addiction for some of her issues.
Judith White, Stone’s mother, told Judge Pilkington that she adores her daughter but, “I don’t adore her behavior and I worry for her mental health.”
White lived with her daughter and grandchildren before ultimately leaving due to Stone’s temperament, which was usually quite bad. Prosecutors informed the judge that Stone has a way of using “threats and intimidation if she doesn’t get what she wants,” like when she told her son’s principal that “He would be sorry” if he didn’t give Stone information she demanded, or the time she told police officers that she was “praying they would get bullets in their heads.”
In her own defense, Stone said, “I don’t deny that I have some significant anger issues,” and saying “I know I need counseling. I feel very judged and misunderstood. I’m really a good person with a good heart but it’s sometimes hard to see because of the ways I feel I need to protect myself.”
While Stone clearly has problems with her mental health, it’s no surprise that she received the sentence that she did, especially with all the evidence against her. Hopefully she experiences some real rehabilitation in prison.