AUBURN — A Mechanic Falls man was charged Tuesday with felony assault stemming from the May stabbing of a neighbor at a mobile home park.
Scott O’Donnell Androscoggin County Jail photo
An Androscoggin County grand jury indicted Scott O’Donnell, 50, on a charge of elevated aggravated assault, a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
O’Donnell also is facing a charge of aggravated assault, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
He is accused of stabbing his neighbor at a mobile home park on Callahan Circle in Mechanic Falls the night of May 18, but claims his actions were self-defense.
A prosecutor in the case told a judge that O’Donnell had been captured on video stabbing the alleged victim with a knife.
Justin Leary, O’Donnell’s attorney, said his client had been punched in the face by Ryan Muncey, which caused O’Donnell to assume a defensive posture.
The two men apparently had known each other from serving time in prison, according to Leary.
O’Donnell’s fiancee, Kelly Ayer, told a judge at a court hearing that O’Donnell had inadvertently driven onto the lawn of his neighbor, Muncey, 42, earlier on the day of the fight.
She said she and O’Donnell had been preparing for their wedding scheduled for three days later.
That incident apparently sparked a dispute between the neighbors that culminated in the alleged assault.
Prosecutors said O’Donnell had been on probation at the time of the alleged assault from one of two homicide convictions in 1991 from when he was a juvenile.
In one case, O’Donnell “beat and raped an elderly woman after he was helping carry her groceries,” using her cane as a weapon, according to Assistant District Attorney Katherine Hudson-MacRae.
He was a juvenile at the time, but had been bound over as an adult and sentenced to 30 years in prison, she said.
While O’Donnell was detained and awaiting the outcome of that charge, “he confided in a cellmate that he murdered another elderly woman by strangling her with a towel,” Hudson-MacRae had said.
O’Donnell had “indicated that he chooses the elderly because they’re weak, and he fantasized about raping them,” Hudson-MacRae had told a judge.
At the time of the alleged stabbing in Mechanic Falls, O’Donnell had been on probation for the latter homicide case in which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, with half of that time suspended.
Hudson-MacRae had filed a motion to revoke O’Donnell’s probation.
He is being held without bail at Androscoggin County Jail.
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