Wielding a hunting knife over his step-sister on the stairs of their home, Wayne W. Williams stabbed her 16 times and had no intention of stopping.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said if the woman\u2019s boyfriend hadn\u2019t been at home and intervened, the step-sister surely would not be alive today.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Williams came remarkably close to ending the life of his step-sister,\u201d Assistant District Attorney Angie Kemp said in court Monday. \u201cIt came remarkably close to being that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams was sentenced Monday to serve 25 years in prison for what Juneau Superior Court Judge Louis Menendez called a \u201chorrific attack\u201d on an unsuspecting victim in March of 2014.<\/p>\n
After reviewing photographs of the victim\u2019s injuries, Menendez said it was one of the most serious assaults he\u2019d ever seen someone survive. The stab wounds were not \u201cslight piercings,\u201d he said; they were \u201cintense, violent and destined to end her life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victim did not appear in court Monday, but told her story to a Juneau grand jury, an audio recording Kemp played for Judge Menendez on Monday. The incident only lasted two and half to three minutes, but \u201cit felt like forever,\u201d the woman testified.<\/p>\n
The victiim said she and her step-brother, who lived at their parents house on Simpson Avenue in Douglas at the time, argued earlier in the day on March 28, 2014, and that he left the house. He had been drinking at the time.<\/p>\n
When he returned later in the afternoon, he came home to find the house locked, and he threw a rock up at his step-sister\u2019s bedroom window. She said she opened the window and told him to stop because he might break it. She went downstairs and unlocked the door.<\/p>\n
She was halfway up the stairs when he came in, and said to her, \u201cDon\u2019t f– talk to me like that, or else I\u2019m gonna do something about it,\u201d she told the grand jurors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, really?\u201d she said she responded.<\/p>\n
The judge later lamented, \u201cThat\u2019s all it took.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams looked at his step-sister, took out a folding buck knife with a three and a half inch blade from his pocket and flipped it open.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just charged me with the knife and proceeded to stab me,\u201d she was heard saying on the audio recording.<\/p>\n
He stabbed her in her face, in her side, in her arms that she raised to protect her face. She screamed out for help, and her then boyfriend came out of her bedroom and saw the two on the stairwell. The boyfriend pushed Williams off and Williams stumbled down the stairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t done,\u201d the boyfriend later told the grand jury, according to his testimony. The boyfriend stood between Williams and his girlfriend, he said, then telling the grand jury he heard Williams say, \u201cI\u2019m going to kill you b–,\u201d during the attack, according to the audio recording.<\/p>\n
The woman ran back up the stairs to her bedroom and called 911, and Williams eventually left. Police arrested him two days later, March 30, 2014, when a citizen tipped off police that a person matching the suspect\u2019s description was pacing in front of his home on the beach. Williams has been in custody since his arrest.<\/p>\n
According to grand jury testimony from Dr. Pamela Gruchacz, a general surgeon at Bartlett Regional Hospital, the victim had narrowly escaped serious injury. One of the stab wounds punctured her liver, but Gruchacz was able to cauterize it to stop the bleeding in time. Another stab wound to her neck \u2014 just two centimeters away from her jugular \u2014 could have been deadly. Another in her clavicle was close to an artery near the heart, which could have been life-threatening.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe could have bled to death,\u201d Gruchacz said to the grand jury of the life-threatening nature of some of the wounds. She said she counted 16 stab wounds in all.<\/p>\n
Williams was charged with attempted first-degree murder; he pleaded guilty in April. A plea deal in place capped his possible jail time at 25 years.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Assistant District Attorney Kemp requested 35 years in prison with 10 years suspended (25 to serve), plus 10 years of probation. She said there\u2019s almost \u201cno hope\u201d in rehabilitating Williams \u2014 he\u2019s been in and out of the criminal system since he was 13, accrued 22 convictions as an adult including two felonies, and that he has been provided countless opportunities to change.<\/p>\n
\u201cJustice demands a sentence that focuses on isolating Mr. Williams,\u201d Kemp said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that it\u2019s time to write Mr. Williams off yet,\u201d defense attorney Eve Soutiere countered.<\/p>\n
Soutiere said alcohol has been a life-long issue for Williams \u2014 he began drinking when he was 10 years old. She said his sentence should consider his potential for rehabilitation, and requested 30 years with 15 years suspended (15 years to serve), plus 20 years on probation following his release from prison.<\/p>\n
If the case had gone to trial, Soutiere said the defense would have argued that Williams was taking antiseizure medication at the time of the attack. Coupled with alcohol, the side effect of the medication can be anger or violent behavior, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Williams is not saying that he didn\u2019t do it, but I think that helps to shed some light on why we\u2019re here today,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When given a chance to speak, Williams apologized.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something I can\u2019t believe I did myself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Judge Menendez agreed with the state and said Williams has \u201cdim\u201d potential for rehabilitation this late in his life. Menendez called Williams\u2019 attack against his step-sister \u201cruthless\u201d and said he had to protect the public from him.<\/p>\n
Said Menendez: \u201cI think you\u2019re a very dangerous person.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wielding a hunting knife over his step-sister on the stairs of their home, Wayne W. Williams stabbed her 16 times and had no intention of stopping. Prosecutors said if the woman\u2019s boyfriend hadn\u2019t been at home and intervened, the step-sister surely would not be alive today. \u201cMr. Williams came remarkably close to ending the life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5465"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}