From Staff Reports
Steven Lane Bunch, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in October 2006 for first degree vehicular homicide and reckless driving in the death of Dalton firefighter Ronnie Dyer, was back in court in Murray County this week on unrelated charges.
Bunch, of Chatsworth, was listed in the “Area Arrests” in The Daily Citizen on Thursday as being charged with possession of firearms by a convicted felon, including a sawed-off shotgun, but the attorney who represented him, Steve Blevins, said Bunch remains in the state prison system. The Department of Corrections Web site lists his most recent institution as Rivers State Prison in Hardwick.
“He had unresolved cases in Murray County before the homicide,” Blevins said. “We were just trying to resolve those cases.”
On Wednesday, Bunch pleaded guilty in Murray County in two cases:
• In August 2005, he was arrested in Murray County for possession of a sawed-off shotgun and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Bunch was sentenced to four years probation, fined $500, and ordered to perform community service, to be added consecutively to his 15-year sentence for the vehicular homicide case from 2006. In the 2006 case, he was also sentenced to 24 months in prison on prior charges of DUI, endangering a child by DUI and driving with a suspended license, to be served concurrently.
• In January 2006, he was arrested by the Eton Police Department for driving on a suspended license, obstruction of a law enforcement officer and fleeing from a law enforcement officer. Bunch was sentenced to 12 months on each of those three counts, to run concurrently with his 15-year sentence in the state penitentiary.
“(These two cases) were going through the normal paces and would have been disposed of (in 2006), but the firearms charges became inconsequential after the vehicular homicide charge,” District Attorney Kermit McManus said Thursday. “These charges just became a housekeeping matter we had to remove him from the penitentiary to take care of.”
