An Old Town man who pleaded guilty to stealing a boat motor from Mission Bay and who led police officers on a chase into La Jolla was sentenced Aug. 18 to five years and eight months in state prison. William Steven Starke, 47, a carpenter, was ordered to pay $844 in restitution for damages to a Harbor Police patrol vehicle that he rammed at the end of the chase on March 15, 2008. The boat motor was “a bait” device that contained a GPS tracking device in it, as Harbor Police officers were investigating a series of boat motor thefts. San Diego Superior Court Judge Theodore Weathers fined him $400 and gave him credit for spending the last 522 days in custody since his arrest at a cul-de-sac on Avenida Mañana in the Mount Soledad area of La Jolla. Deputy District Attorney Steven Marquardt asked for eight years in prison, and the maximum was nine. Starke was driving a stolen Volkswagen Jetta, and after he put the motor in the trunk, he went to sleep in the car. His probation report says police officers woke him up and wanted to see if he was the one who took the motor. Starke told a probation officer he didn’t recognize the officers as police, and he thought they were carjackers, so he instead drove away fast through Pacific Beach. Starke wasn’t too familiar with the car, and he continued to drive around 1:30 a.m. even though he couldn’t get the headlights to work. He drove along La Jolla Scenic Drive and turned into the cul-de-sac without realizing it was a dead end. He then rammed a police patrol car. Starke refused to leave the vehicle, so an officer broke the window and he was pulled outside. One officer was cut by glass. Ranger, a large Rottweiler that was Starke’s dog, jumped out the window and snarled at the officers. Officers backed up, but told probation officials the dog was aggressive and they shot him to death in self-defense. Starke by then was in handcuffs. Starke pleaded guilty April 27 to two counts of assault on police officers with the car ramming, evading police with reckless driving, auto theft, receiving stolen property and vandalism. Starke has a lengthy record, but most of the offenses are disorderly conduct, or being drunk in public. He first went to prison in 1983 in Florida after being convicted of larceny and transportation of stolen goods, his probation report says. He was convicted of misdemeanor stalking in San Diego in 1997 when he followed a former girlfriend and her date to a restaurant and made a rude accusation that led to his arrest. He was sent back to prison in 2006 for being a felon in possession of a firearm.