A Damariscotta man who threatened four Navy instructors by pointing a pistol at them near a remote military training base in northwestern Maine pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor assault charges in U.S. District Court in Bangor.
U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank said in a news release that 32-year-old Justin Woods admitted to “knowingly and intentionally assaulting four people with a pistol” during an encounter that took place Aug. 28, 2017.
Woods faces up to six months in prison, a $5,000 fine and one year of supervised release. He will be sentenced following an evaluation by the U.S. Probation Office.
Woods was working as a contract employee providing support for the Navy’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) school in Redington Township, federal court documents show.
The four Navy instructors were returning from an off base social gathering in the town of Rangeley when they met Woods and another person in a vehicle on the SERE school’s access road. When one of the instructors asked Woods, who was a passenger, and his companion “What’s going on?” Woods responded to the question by saying “I’ll show what’s going on.”
Court records indicate that Woods then started to brandish a pistol and pointed the weapon at the four Navy instructors causing them to flee the scene in their motor vehicle.
“Mr. Woods brandishing and pointing of the pistol caused (the instructors) to have reasonable fear and apprehension of imminent harm,” court documents state, noting that he was intoxicated.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigated the incident.
Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:
dhoey@pressherald.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
