Shooting lands man seven-year prison sentence

PALMER — A Trapper Creek man who traded shots with a neighbor was sentenced Thursday to serve more than seven years in prison.

George Ernest Blodgett was hospitalized in late November 2008 with a gunshot wound to the leg. He’d hitchhiked to the hospital after an argument with his neighbor, Rudy Gestl, had ended in gunshots. Blodgett wound up charged with attempted murder, assault and weapons misconduct. Prior to Thursday’s hearing he had pleaded guilty to assault and weapons misconduct and, in exchange, the attempted murder charge was dropped.

On Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Rick Allen urged Superior Court Judge Gregory Heath to take a good look at the pre-sentence report prepared in advance of that day’s proceedings.

“It lays out this defendant’s 34 years of almost non-stop criminal history,” Allen said.

Though Blodgett had moved to Alaska only 10 years ago, the report, Allen said, laid out criminal convictions in Vermont, Florida, New York and West Virginia.

“We are long past the time of worrying about what’s best for Mr. Blodgett,” Allen said. “This is someone who, for the protection of the public, needs to be isolated.”

The prison sentence Blodgett faced ranged from four to seven years. Allen asked for seven and that Heath send Blodgett to prison for an additional 17 months by revoking his probation on a 2005 felony drunken driving conviction.

On the other side, Blodgett’s attorney, Krista Maciolek, asked for the minimum four years. She argued that the case wasn’t clear-cut. Although Alaska State Troopers say one of Blodgett’s shots landed in Gestl’s stove, Maciolek said her investigator wasn’t so sure. There were a lot of dents and dings in Gestl’s trailer and that bullet hole might have been an old one.

As for Blodgett, she said he was well-liked in the community and had done a commendable job in tackling his drinking problem. He didn’t get along with Gestl. Probably never would. But he went to his neighbor’s house that day to, in his mind at least, protect a woman he’d been living with.

“He’s a mountain man,” she said. “He needs to recognize that he can’t rescue every single woman that crosses his path.”

Gestl was given a chance to speak as well. He said he wanted to be paid for his stove, which, he said, didn’t have any bullet holes before Blodgett showed up that day.

“What if he’d hit the gas line and the whole thing blew up? That’s close enough to death to me,” he said. “This fight is not over in his mind, although I don’t know what it was about to begin with.”

He also disputed claims that Blodgett is well-regarded among his neighbors.

“Maybe he has a bunch of friends here. He’s also got a bunch of enemies,” Gestl said. “People came up to me and said, ‘I’m glad you shot him.’”

For Blodgett’s part, he pointed to his record in alcohol treatment — he stayed in treatment longer than the court ordered him to and never gave a dirty urinalysis sample.

“I was doing so good until this interrupted my life,” he said. “I just want this to be over.”

Heath, for the most part, sided with Allen. Though Blodgett deserves credit for working on his drinking, Heath said his criminal record, which includes drug crimes, assault charges, drunken driving convictions and even past gun crimes, speaks for itself.

“You just have no self-control,” Heath said. “Society no longer, whether you’re a mountain man or not, allows people to take weapons into a neighbor’s house and threaten them and then shoot at the residence.”

He eventually decided to give Blodgett a six-year sentence and impose the 17 months remaining on his drunken driving conviction.

“Make some better decisions or next time you’ll likely go back for longer,” Heath told Blodgett.

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