La Plata, MD – Albert Bennie Long III, 21 of Youngsville, NC, facing second-degree assault charges Monday, Sept. 14 for offensive contact with another person in Pomfret back on May 2, was looking at serious jail time.
Long is the father of the victim’s grandchildren. The victim got into an argument with her daughter, the mother of Long’s children, who called the defendant.
“He came over to the house, goes into the trunk, pulls out a gun and waves it in the air,” said Charles County Assistant States Attorney Tiffany Campbell. “Then he got in the car and drove away. No weapon was recovered.
“This matter is very serious,” Campbell added. “We have no weapon. We don’t know if it was a handgun or a BB gun. The defendant indicated it was a BB gun.”
She stated that assistant state’s attorney Constance Kopelman spoke with the victim. When told that sentencing guidelines called for 18 months, the victim tried to recant.
“She felt that was too harsh,” Campbell told the court. “She was asking us to reduce the penalty or drop the case.
“We can’t have people waving around weapons,” she stressed.
“The daughter came down to the end of the driveway where my client was,” Long’s attorney, Eric Garcia, said. “There were three people coming down the driveway behind her. The mother had a stun gun. What he had was a BB gun, the type that uses a Co2 cartridge. It was unloaded. He pulled it out and told everyone to back up.
“Mr. Long is 5 foot, 3 inches,” Garcia noted. “There were three people coming at him. He never intended to assault anyone. He knows he should never have gotten into this situation.
“Mr. Long is a very attentive parent to both of his children,” Garcia told the court. “This is one of those cases where the situation just got out of hand.
“The victim in this case was also charged with assault,” he added.
Garcia also explained that Long has a job making $9.50 an hour in North Carolina and that having to pay $17 a day for the electronic monitoring device created a hardship for him.
“When you bring out a weapon, you do the wrong thing,” Charles County Circuit Court Judge Helen I. Harrington told Long.
Then she gave him the break of his life.
Noting that Long had 130 days of electronic monitoring, Harrington sentenced him to 10 years, then suspended all of that sentence, giving him credit for four days he spent in jail and for the 130 he was monitored as well.
She placed him on three years of unsupervised probation, ordered him to undergo anger management and told him that he is to have no firearms during the length of his probation.
“Stay out of trouble and that should be the end of it,” Harrington said.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com