AUBURN – A Lewiston man was sentenced Monday to six months in jail after pleading guilty to criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon in connection with an incident last summer at a 7-Eleven store bathroom in Lewiston.

Marty Paige, 31, of 47 Knox St. also had been indicted on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault. Those counts are expected to be dismissed, a court clerk said.

A woman told police that she was in the bathroom at the chain’s Main Street store with another woman shortly before 2:30 a.m. one August morning when she heard a loud banging on the door, Assistant District Attorney Deborah Cashman told a judge in Androscoggin County Superior Court.

The woman called out that they would exit soon. The banging continued. When she opened the door, Paige pushed his way in, saying he was going to choke her, Cashman said the woman would have told jurors, had case gone to trial.

Paige slammed the woman against a toilet at the back wall, his hands moving to her throat. He pulled a pen-like object from his pocket and held it to the woman’s throat, threatening to kill her, Cashman told the judge.

The woman later left the store then went to police and told them her story, describing Paige, who had been wearing a T-shirt with Sesame Street characters on it, Cashman said.

Police dispatchers told patrol officers to be on the lookout for a person fitting that description, Cashman said. An officer spotted Paige and picked him up shortly before 3 a.m. Police found a pen-like object in his pocket.

A doctor who examined the woman at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston said her story was consistent with the marks on her neck, Cashman said.

The other woman who had been in the bathroom at the time of the incident told police at first she didn’t see anybody, then said she had been drunk and couldn’t remember, Cashman said.

Cashman read a statement written by the woman. In it, the woman said: “You have altered my life in a drastic way and you and I both know that I did nothing to deserve what you did to me that night.”

She wrote that Paige, who was convicted in 2007 for assault, had escaped conviction of other charges before and had been “able to walk free after hurting so many people.”

She wrote, telling the judge that “I feel he needs to be held accountable for his actions and take responsibility for them.”

In her statement, the woman wrote that she had not been able to take her 6-year-old daughter to play in the park “because I’m scared of who’s there or what might happen is the most horrible feeling in the world.”

Although Paige apologized when Justice William Brodrick asked him if he had anything to say, Brodrick later concluded Paige was unremorseful.

“I get the impression you really are not sorry, Mr. Paige,” Brodrick said.

Paige’s attorney said his client planned to return to Virginia after serving his time at Androscoggin County Jail.


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