Sentence handed down for Sutton family fight

PALMER — A judge sentenced a man once indicted on attempted murder to five years in prison Friday for second-degree assault.

At an 11 a.m. hearing, presiding judge Eric Smith dismissed two other misdemeanor counts — a fourth-degree assault case and a fifth-degree criminal mischief case — and accepted a guilty plea from Hunter Hedrick, 26. Hedrick is also the subject of an ongoing assault case in the Anchorage courts, charged in February 2014. Trial in that case is tentatively scheduled for March, according to online court documents.

According to testimony Friday, Hunter Hedrick jumped on and tried to strangle his father, Michael Hedrick, at King Mountain Lodge as part of a series of escalating confrontations in January 2014. In response, Michael Hedrick pulled out a knife and stabbed his son multiple times. After the fight, Hunter Hedrick made it to the Sutton General Store, and emergency medical personnel transported him from there to an Anchorage hospital via helicopter for treatment of serious wounds.

Officials indicted Hunter Hedrick in May 2014, and he’s been in state custody on a $50,000 bond ever since.

A Palmer grand jury added the attempted murder charge without a request from either the Alaska State Troopers, who investigated the fight, or the district attorney’s office, according to Prosecuting attorney Kerry Corliss.

“Originally, the grand jury added the attempted murder charge,” she said. “It was not something that was proposed by officers or by the district attorney’s office. Believing that we couldn’t prove that charge beyond a reasonable doubt is what led us to resolution at the level of assault in the second degree.”

The decision to accept a plea deal was difficult, said defense attorney Jeffrey Bradley. On one hand, the evidence for and against Hedrick was mostly in the form of he and his father’s testimony.

“In all of (the disputes), the only two individuals were father and son,” he said. “There’s never anybody else around to corroborate or dispute any of the facts, and in every case it becomes he-said-she-said, or he-said-he-said.”

There was also instance to suggest a history of domestic violence in the family, and Hunter Hedrick was seriously injured as a result of the confrontation.

“In this incident, younger Mr. Hedrick here definitely got the worst of it,” he said. “What appears to have begun as a fist fight became something significantly greater. His father managed to get to a pocketknife, and Mr. Hedrick suffered serious stab wounds.”

Bradly said the plea deal made sense because it was unclear how the men’s stories would play in court.

“That was very daunting to me to anticipate how the two of them presented very differently in court,” he said. “So this was, from my perspective, a strategic decision, and from Mr. Hedrick’s perspective, also strategic, but a much more emotionally difficult decision.”

Hunter Hedrick said he loves his father despite the fight. Upon his release, he said he intends to live with family in West Virginia.

“I was going through a lot in my mind in that time,” he said. “I just want to say that no matter what, he’s still my father, and I love him unconditionally. I just hope we can all get by this, and no hard feelings. I’m alive, I’m okay. He’s alive, he’s okay, and I hope as time goes by I can learn from it, and so can he. Forgiveness is key in this, and that’s all I got to say, man.”

Contact Reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.