PORT ANGELES — A Clallam Bay Corrections Center inmate has been convicted of assaulting an officer with a metal shank last February.
Carlos Avalos, 20, was found guilty of second-degree assault at the conclusion of a five-day jury trial in Clallam County Superior Court on Friday.
He will be sentenced Feb. 25.
Avalos was charged last April with first-degree assault with a deadly weapon — a 4- to 5-inch homemade metal knife, or “shank” — that he allegedly used to stab Corrections Officer Eric Huether on Feb. 3, 2014.
Injuries received
Huether suffered cuts to his face, head, neck, hands and torso, including a long gash on his face adjacent to his right eye and a cut to his throat, court papers said.
He was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and discharged from Olympic Medical Center shortly after the attack.
Assistant state Attorneys General Joshua Choate and John Hillman prosecuted the case at the request of the Clallam County prosecuting attorney.
Defense attorney Alex Stalker of the nonprofit Clallam Public Defender represented Avalos.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge Christopher Melly presided over the trial.
An aggravated circumstance was added to the first-degree assault charge last October because Avalos “demonstrated or displayed an egregious lack of remorse” in recorded phone calls from prison in which Avalos laughed when relatives questioned him about the attack.
The jury, however, was not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Avalos was guilty of first-degree assault with a deadly weapon and convicted him of the lesser offense.
The jury also found that Avalos did not demonstrate or display an egregious lack of remorse.
Second-degree assault occurs when someone “intentionally assaults another and thereby recklessly inflicts substantial bodily harm or assaults another with a deadly weapon.”
Avalos has been serving a 10-year sentence for attacking a counselor with a homemade knife and hitting a security officer at a corrections vocational school in Chehalis in June 2012.
Additional sentence
He now faces an additional sentence with a standard range of four years and five months to five years and 10 months, the state Attorney General’s Office said.
Huether told investigators that he was attacked while he worked at a computer station in an office. He said he had never interacted with Avalos before the attack and that the assault was unprovoked.
Huether activated his body alarm and stopped the attack by spraying Avalos with pepper spray.
Other officers arrived and subdued Avalos.
A bloody shank, likely crafted from metal removed from a cell heating vent, was found in a hallway near the scene of the attack, court documents said.
The 850-inmate medium- to maximum-security prison went into lockdown for nearly a week after the attack.
“Our state’s corrections officers serve a vital public safety role,” state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in Friday news release.
“I am pleased that my office was able to bring Mr. Avalos to justice.”
Avalos was being held Saturday at Stafford Creek Corrections Center near Aberdeen.
Melly signed an order for Avalos’ transport back to Port Angeles for his sentencing hearing at 9 a.m. Feb. 25.
