ROCKLAND — A 21-year-old Rockland man was sentenced Friday to nine months in jail for attacking his father with a hammer.

The sentence is less than what had been negotiated in July when Gabriel Grover originally pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, terrorizing, and criminal mischief.

Grover was sentenced Friday in Knox County Superior Court by Justice Jeffrey Hjelm to three years in jail with all but nine months suspended for the offenses as well as for violating terms of probation on an earlier offense.

Grover had pleaded guilty in July to the offenses and had agreed to be sentenced to a year behind bars. The victim in the assault — his father — asked the court not to sentence his son to jail. John Grover said in July his son needed mental health care, not jail, and that he would not have called police had he known what the outcome would have been.

After the father addressed the court in July, the younger man asked the court for more time to decide whether to accept the plea agreement.

According to an affidavit filed in court at the time of the June 23 incident in Warren, Gabriel Grover struck his father in the head with a hammer after a verbal argument. The son also took a large rock and threw it through the windshield of a motor vehicle, according to the affidavit.

The defendant was on probation for a 2011 eluding a police officer conviction and had violated probation twice during 2012. He also had convictions in 2011 for burglary and possession of dangerous knives.

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