Bar fight gets man 10 months

PALMER — A man convicted of stabbing another man outside Klondike Mike’s last year received a 10-month sentence Friday.

Johnathan Robert William Gilliam, 22, was arrested slightly more than a year ago after a fight outside the bar. Both sides at the time said the whole thing started over a game of pool and ended on the sidewalk with a fistfight. He has since pleaded guilty to assault and evidence tampering — for wiping his knife clean and washing the clothes he was wearing.

Gilliam and the man he stabbed — Richard Beck — were not the only two people in the fight, two others jumped in after it started, one on each side.

Beck was the only one stabbed.

Friday, he told Superior Court Judge Eric Smith that he’d had a collapsed lung and multiple teeth knocked out in the fracas. Beck said he initially figured Gilliam should get as little prison time as possible. But then he heard rumors Gilliam had bragged about the fight afterward.

“I’m no gangster. I didn’t deserved to be stabbed,” he said.

Beck told Smith that most of the facts presented were true — he and Gilliam were drunk. And they decided to fight.

“What should’ve been a fisticuffs, handling it like men, he decided to pull out a knife,” Beck testified.

For his part, Gilliam said he still believes he saw a gun under Beck’s coat that night. He said he found it odd that officers searched Beck after he’d arrived at the hospital but didn’t search his coat.

“They had my jacket,” Beck said from the viewing gallery.

Gilliam said he’s cleaned up since the fight. He has a new daughter he’s taking care of. He said he’s been sober since the fight.

“It was just wrong place, wrong time,” Gilliam said.

His attorney, Nathaniel Peters, pointed out that since the incident Gilliam has cooperated with police. He turned himself in. He told the truth the whole way through.

Smith, in handing out Gilliam’s sentence, basically split the difference between the sentence of more than a year that prosecutors were seeking and the one-month term Gilliam’s attorney sought.

“This was a bar fight that almost turned tragic,” Smith said. “Someone almost died.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.