Local man sentenced for hitting his girlfriend with hammer

District Court Judge Daniel Boucher sentenced a local man to three years to the Department of Corrections for stabbing and hitting his girlfriend with a hammer.

Tyler The Boy, 26, received seven years to the DOC for felony assault with a weapon with four years suspended and credit for 340 days already served. The sentence is pursuant to a plea deal that dismissed five other charges, among them three counts of partner or family member assault and another count of assault with a weapon.

Boucher gave The Boy a chance to speak and he said he apologized to the community, the courtroom, everyone he hurt and, especially, his mother. His mother, who was in the courtroom, cried and hugged her son before he was taken away by the bailiff.  

The Boy said that as he's been sitting in jail, he's had a lot of time to think and realized he was young and impulsive, but now he wanted to get better and asked Boucher that he make a way for him to be enrolled in the  boot camp program at Treasure State Correctional Training Center.

The program takes all kinds of offenders and emphasizes personal responsibility, discipline, healthy living and becoming physically fit. The length of the boot camp is 90 to 120 days.

Boucher said all he could do was recommend that The Boy be enrolled in the boot camp program and that he hoped he would.

The sentence he passed down, Boucher said, was to protect the public from The Boy while taking his age into consideration and offering him an opportunity for rehabilitation.

The incident that brought The Boy to the sentencing occurred Nov. 28, when Northern Montana Hospital officials called Havre Police to report that they were treating a patient who had been assaulted. Officers entered the room of the victim and noticed round bruises in the shape of a hammer head on her legs, bruises on her arms, bite marks and a stab wound about one centimeter long on her upper arm.

During The Boy's plea hearing in early September, he said he was dating someone who was using drugs at the time. During the course of two days, the two had "quarrels and disagreements," he said. The arguments escalated and The Boy said he hit the woman with a hammer.

The victim told the investigating officer that The Boy bit her, hit her with a hammer and also stabbed her with a knife.