By Eddie Gregg
Billings Gazette
BILLINGS, Mt. — A public defender acknowledged in District Court on Monday that his client’s sentencing hearing was “ironic.”
At the hearing, a female detention officer — the victim of an assault during an attempted jail break in April — testified that convicted felon Ty Chaney Nelson had “absolutely” saved her life.
Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Nelson, 23, on a felony count of assault on a peace officer for kneeing a policeman in the groin in November 2012.
The judge sentenced Nelson to three years with the state Department of Corrections, with credit for about 400 days already spent in jail, and suspended the rest of the sentence. The judge also dismissed a felony count of escape stemming from the same incident.
The emotional detention officer testified that Nelson, who was an inmate at the county jail at the time of the attempted jail break, was the only person who immediately helped her when she was assaulted.
On April 19, Joshua David Heafner and Simon Elliot Jacobson tried to break out of the Yellowstone County Detention Facility.
Heafner was in the jail after using a pellet gun to rob a Billings casino on March 15. A few days later he engaged in a 90-minute standoff with police before being arrested.
Jacobson was being held at the jail on murder, kidnapping, robbery and other charges.
The two inmates were in the visiting area at the jail when Heafner grabbed the detention officer by the neck as Jacobson tried to kick out the glass divider between the inmates and the public.
The detention officer said Monday that Nelson pulled Heafner off of her.
“Nelson is the only one that helped me,” she said.
Full story: Detention officer testifies on behalf of man convicted of assaulting a peace officer