Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – You can’t just go around pulling firearms on folks.

That was the message prosecutors wanted to get across to a 70-year-old Curtis resident who claimed he mistook the grown daughter of a neighbor for a poacher when he fired his weapon and ordered her to the ground at gunpoint one night last November.

Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Brad Meagher recommended jail time for Gary O. Watson during a hearing today in Lewis County Superior Court.

Watson, who let his attorney speak for him, was in court to formalize a plea agreement that allowed him to escape a felony assault charge, and what his lawyer said was the possibility of having to serve every day of a 38 month sentence had he gone to trial and failed to persuade a jury it was self defense.

“I just want to make sure the court understands this was a very unique and fortunately not catastrophic alignment of facts,” defense attorney David Arcuri told the judge.

Watson was arrested Nov. 13 at the 1000 block of Wildwood Road in the south end of the Boistfort Valley.

Arriving Lewis County sheriff’s deputies were told Watson was outside his home because he’d been called by a neighbor about a suspicious car stopped on the road earlier. The 27-year-old victim said she was on the roadway when it happened.

The facts are in dispute and prosecutors would have had some “proof problems” for second-degree assault had they gone to trial, Meagher told the court.

Watson has no criminal history, he said.

“We agree it was really not the proper way to handle the situation, but Mr. Watson did not intend to point blank assault someone,” Meagher said as described the reason for reducing the charges.

The sheriff’s office arrested Watson for first-degree assault in November. Prosecutors then charged him with second-degree assault. The agreement was guilty pleas to three gross misdemeanors.

The participants described a scenario in which Watson got a call from Amanda Freidly’s parents who live on the other side of the road telling him a car had broke down earlier nearby, had left and then returned but its driver was nowhere to be seen.

Arcuri said they told him it could be poachers, in a stretch of the Boistfort Valley he called “elk poaching central.”

Watson went outside with his gun, in the dark, and when a vehicle pulled into a drive across the road, he “makes a mistake of firing a shot,” Arcuri said.

He ordered the person out of the car and holds them at gunpoint, Arcuri said.

Watson said he fired a shot in the air. Amanda Freidly said a bullet whizzed right past her.

“I want to make sure the court understands almost a perfect storm of bad facts,” Arcuri said as he attempted to persuade the judge to accept agreed recommendation for a sentence.

Through his lawyer, Watson admitted he did it in such a way that created a substantial risk of death or injury and the manner in which he “displayed” his firearm would have caused her to be alarmed for her safety

The attorneys told Judge James Lawler the defendant lived his entire life in the area crime free and that Freidly’s mother Debbie Mueller had called him to warn him she thought might be poachers outside.

Mueller said – outside the courtroom – she told him no such thing. And it’s her understanding Watson and his wife live on a boat in Olympia and use his mother-in-law’s home on Wildwood Road for a fixed address, she said.

Freidly said the episode terrified her, and described that she still finds herself scared deeply at times for no good reason.

Watson pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault, unlawful display of a firearm and reckless endangerment.

He agreed to give up his concealed weapon permit.

Judge Lawler accepted the plea agreement of 20 days in jail. The rest of the possible 364 days will be suspended for two years.

The judge said he was satisfied it was fair given Watson’s lack of criminal history during a lifetime of residence here and given the potential of what could have happened, since it involved a gun.

“A lot of gross misdemeanors get just a day or two in jail,” Lawler said.

Watson got credit for three days served when he was arrested.

He was taken into custody at the end of the hearing.
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Read about the arrest, here

Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter

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