Lima resident Isaiah Williams, 57, was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for threatening to kill his wife during a domestic dispute in May of last year.
J Swygart | The Lima News
LIMA — Saying that infidelity “in and of itself does not justify pulling a gun out, pointing it at someone and telling them you’re going to kill them,” Allen County Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey Reed on Monday sentenced a Lima man to prison for doing just that.
Isaiah Williams, 57, was sentenced to a minimum of two years in prison for threatening to kill his wife during a dispute on May 26 of last year at their residence on North West Street in Lima.
Williams was indicted by a grand jury in July on a single count of felonious assault, a second-degree felony that included a three-year firearm specification. In January, one week before he was to stand trial, Williams entered into an agreement with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to the felonious assault charge. In exchange for that prosecutors dismissed the firearm specification.
Court documents claim Williams and his wife were arguing over his spouse’s alleged infidelity when he became “enraged” and began threatening his wife. He reportedly threw her on the bed and said he was going to force her to have sex with him and then kill her. He then reportedly pointed an unloaded revolver at the woman and pulled the trigger, court records show.
During Monday’s sentencing hearing Assistant Allen County Prosecuting Attorney Joe Everhart said Williams and his wife “were married in title, but maybe not in fidelity” and had not been living as man and wife at the time of the incident. Everhart said the relationship “had been mostly over for seven years.”
Steve Chamberlain from the Allen County Public Defenders Office said the incident had been overblown.
“He was angry, he had been drinking, he had an unloaded firearm,” Chamberlain told the judge. “He had tolerated the brazen infidelity of his wife but on this particular day he simply couldn’t take it anymore.”
Chamberlain said the victim in the case had recommended a term of probation for Williams and urged the judge to do the same.
Reed said otherwise in issuing the two-year sentence. He said Williams will be eligible to apply for a judicial release in six months.
