From the Courts: District Court

A Havre man received one year of probation for beating a friend to the point of requiring restorative plastic surgery and incurring permanent damage to his face.

Brian Carpenter, born in 1977, pleaded no contest in a plea deal to a misdemeanor assault Tuesday in state District Court in Havre. The charge was amended Tuesday from felony aggravated assault.

District Judge Daniel Boucher imposed a one-year deferred imposition of sentence on Carpenter, also ordering him to continue counseling to improve his anger coping skills. If Carpenter abides by the conditions of his sentence, he can have the offense struck off his record.

According to court documents, a Hill County Sheriff’s Office deputy called Havre Police dispatch July 4 to report that he found a bloody man in need of medical attention lying in the street in downtown Havre.

The injured man was lying on his side and was being helped by Carpenter. There was injury to his right eye and nose, and his nose was “bleeding heavily,” court documents say. The man was very drunk and hostile to everyone.

Carpenter told officers the man had been at the Eagles Club earlier but he didn’t know what happened to him. The man refused to tell officers what happened.

“He said he had been walking and fell down. Then he said he had been shoved from behind. Then he said he had been beaten up by an unknown group of people,” documents say.

The man wanted Carpenter to take him home. Carpenter said he would.

The deputy who found the two men said that 20 minutes before finding the bloody man on the street, he had seen two men, face to face, near Wells Fargo on Second Street.

The man called an officer Aug. 22 to talk about being assaulted July 4.

The man said he and Carpenter had been drinking together that day and had come back from the Eagles campground to the Eagles club in Havre, where the two drank some shots. The man told the officer he told Carpenter he needed to choose between his girlfriend or ex-wife.

Later on, Carpenter began walking home and the man said he offered to give him a ride home. Carpenter told him they were no longer friends, and after some arguing, the man said, he turned around to go back to his car.

The man was then shoved multiple times and fell, he told the officer. Carpenter then got on top of him and punched him about 10 times in the face, the man told police. The man said he lost consciousness and when he woke up Carpenter was still punching him in the face. Carpenter also picked him up and threw him in the street.

“The next thing (the man) knew was there were sirens and a lot of people around him … ,” documents say.

The man told the officer the reason he didn’t say anything the night he was beat up was because he was afraid he’d lose his job for being in a fight. The officer told the man he was a victim in this case. The man said he now understood and he was just shaken up at the time.

The man said Carpenter was the man who beat him up.

He said he was referred by someone at Northern Montana Hospital to a plastic surgery center in Great Falls because he had a fractured left orbital wall.

Medical reports confirm the man had surgery to his his left orbital eye, and an implant in his eye to fix it and he has incurred permanent damage from the assault.