JOPLIN, Mo. —
An Oronogo man pleaded guilty Friday to assaulting a Jasper County deputy who shot him in the face during a domestic disturbance call two years ago.
Wayne E. Stewart, 36, changed his plea to guilty in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin on a felony count of assault on a law enforcement officer in a plea agreement with the prosecutor’s office. The deal would cap the prison time Stewart might be required to serve at 10 years.
Circuit Judge David Mouton delayed formal acceptance or rejection of the plea bargain and ordered the completion of a sentencing-assessment report on the defendant. The judge set Stewart’s sentencing hearing for Dec. 9.
Stewart gained the upper hand on Deputy Adam Blankenship during a scuffle May 6, 2009, outside his home on Webbwood Drive in Oronogo.
Blankenship was responding to a call reporting a disturbance at the address when he spotted the defendant’s girlfriend, Nikki Ann Ford, and her 13-year-old daughter running down the street with Stewart in pursuit of them. The deputy ordered the defendant to get down on the ground as the women ran to the home of a neighbor who was a Webb City police officer, but Stewart would not comply with the officer’s order, according to testimony at a hearing two years ago.
The deputy sprayed Stewart three times with pepper spray and administered several kicks to his legs before grabbing him in a headlock and taking him to the ground. Stewart slipped out of the hold and got the deputy on his back with a forearm across his throat and started gouging one of his eyes.
“I was in fear for my life,” the deputy told the court two years ago. “I could not get out from beneath him.”
Stewart allegedly kept telling the deputy that he was going to have to kill him to get him off of him. Blankenship testified that he pulled his handgun, put it to the side of the defendant’s head and pulled the trigger, but the gun failed to discharge. He withdrew the gun a short distance from Stewart’s head and squeezed the trigger a second time. The gun fired, and the bullet struck Stewart in the face.
The defendant was taken to a Joplin hospital where he was reported to be in serious condition but eventually recovered.
He initially faced charges of first-degree domestic assault and resisting arrest as well as assault on an officer. A probable-cause affidavit alleged that Stewart and Ford had been arguing for several days about his alleged drug abuse and that he had choked her and squirted her in the eye with a substance in a syringe that she believed to be methamphetamine.
The other charges were dismissed prior to the preliminary hearing in November 2009.
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