Mixed verdict for American River canyon restaurant owner
By Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee
An El Dorado County jury on Thursday found embattled restaurateur Kevin Cairns not guilty of any of the three felonies with which he had been charged, but did convict him on five misdemeanor counts,
The mixed verdict was the conclusion of a weeklong trial in which Cairns, who ran a restaurant east of Pollock Pines on Highway 50, was accused of assaulting people in his parking lot on multiple occasions beginning in November 2010.
Cairns acknowledged shaking a stick at one car of people, throwing a traffic cone at another and yelling at a third until they left, but denied his behavior was illegal.
The jury found Cairns not guilty of felony assault in two of the cases, but found him guilty of misdemeanor assaults.
Likewise, jurors found him not guilty of felony vandalism, for striking a truck with a stick, but guilty of misdemeanor vandalism.
Cairns was also convicted of misdemeanors of disturbing the peace and exhibiting a deadly weapon, the stick he had brandished.
Those convictions carry possible sentences of up to a year in jail.