FARMINGTON – A Farmington man was sentenced to serve 15 months of a three-year sentence in prison Friday for an assault on officer that left a Franklin County deputy, who had been trying to arrest him, fighting for his life in November.

Bert P. Parent, also known as Nicholas Burgess, 39, pleaded guilty to charges of assault on an officer, theft by unauthorized taking and refusing to submit to arrest.

In addition to the three years in jail, he received sentences of 15 months for the theft charge and six months for refusing to submit to arrest, all to run concurrently with a Cumberland County sentence on a conviction of assault on a minor, according to court documents. He was also ordered to serve two years’ probation.

Deputy Sandy Burke had been investigating a case of forged money orders and had interviewed Parent twice without any problems. But when Burke went to arrest him at an Industry residence where he was doing some work for the Rev. Lewis Glidden, Parent grabbed a handgun he had hidden at the corner of the house, Burke said, after Friday’s sentencing.

Burke put Parent in a headlock, but the Farmington man elbowed the deputy in the groin and grabbed his eyeglasses and threw them, Burke said.

“Either him or myself could have been dead,” Burke said. “(Parent) had a gun in his hand.”

The struggle went on for five to eight minutes, Burke said.

“I thought about letting him go and shooting him,” the deputy said, “I didn’t, I hung on and I finally got some help. I got assistance from Mr. Glidden and (county) Cpl. Nate Bean.”

Parent told Burke during the fight that he wasn’t going to jail, the deputy said.

The gun was unloaded, which he didn’t know at the time, but there was a clip on the holster Parent had, he said.

“I’m satisfied with the sentence, but I believe he deserved more,” Burke said.

Parent had several aliases, Burke said, but no convictions before being charged with the Industry incident.

There had been a warrant out for Parent’s arrest related to a 2002 charge of felony assault against a child, a state prosecutor said previously, Parent has since been convicted and sentenced in that case.

Parent’s lawyer, Ron Hoffman, who was unavailable for comment after the sentencing hearing Friday, had previously said that his client is an artist who uses Nicholas Burgess as a pen name and sells his work on the Internet. He also said that the money orders Parent was accused of forging were payment for his work. Hoffman also said his client was suicidal and had grabbed the handgun planning to go into the woods to end his life. Burke, however, said that Parent had hidden a knife near the house and had walked past it to get the gun.