Park City wine bandit sentenced to prison

A former employee who admitted stealing expensive wine from a Park City restaurant during an armed robbery has been sentenced to prison.

Christopher S. Schutte, 46, pleaded guilty in August to robbery and attempted aggravated burglary charges, both second-degree felonies. An unlawful detention count was dismissed as part of plea deal, according to court records.

On Monday, 3rd District Judge Paige Petersen sentenced him to prison for up to 15 years.

Schutte, who was fired from Flanagan's Irish Pub & Restaurant in 2014, was accused of robbing the restaurant on March 27.

Police say he wore a ski mask into the restaurant and while he was in the process of loading bottles of wine into a duffel bag, an employee spotted him in the basement.

Schutte then pulled out a revolver when confronted by the employee, according to police, and fled through a back door into an alley.

Charging documents state that when Cunningham was arrested at a Park City hotel on March 3, police found the expensive wine, champagne and a gift box, all of which had all been stolen from the restaurant.

The judge ordered the wine-theft case to run concurrently to two other cases in which Schutte pleaded guilty, a drug possession case and a drug-related child endangerment case, both third-degree felonies for which Schutte was sentenced to zero-to-five-years prison terms.