Crime & Safety

Easton Police Describe Fight at Headquarters

Easton officers testify in preliminary hearing of man who threatened cops, stole shotgun.

A Bangor man accused of fighting after stealing a shotgun from a city police cruiser is headed to trial.

Leslie Smith, 23, is also accused of threatening to kill the officers who subdued and arrested him last November in the Easton police garage. 

On Wednesday, two of those police officers testified against Smith during his preliminary hearing, detailing what it took to bring him under control. Following their testimony, ruled there was enough evidence to take the case to trial.

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"Like superhuman strength" is how Officer Ryan Celia described Smith's efforts to resist his arrest. 

According to testimony Wednesday, a call came over the police radio from Officer Joshua Marvin on the night of Nov. 1 that a man was in the police garage and had gotten into a patrol car.

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Officer Brett Bindicks was the first officer to respond to Marvin's call. He described seeing his colleague struggle with a man in the front seat of a patrol car. He testified that the other man was Smith.

Bindicks said he could see that Smith was holding a shotgun that he recognized as the type of gun kept in the city police cruisers.

"If you could cock that shotgun, if you could rack that shotgun, you could fire it?" asked Assistant District Attorney Robert Eyer.

Bindicks told him that was correct. Even after the shotgun had been taken away, Smith continued to ask "Where's my gun, where's my gun?" Bindicks testified.

Other officers arrived to subdue Smith, but he continued to kick and thrash, Bindicks said. He never stopped threatening to kill the officers present.

"It was like a broken record, honestly," Celia said.

Defense attorney Susan Hutnik asked both officers if it appeared Smith was under the influence. Both of them said yes.

"Someone that size really doesn't have the strength" to fight the way he did, Celia said.

Hutnik asked Bindicks how Smith could have gotten into the car in the first place if department policy mandates the cruisers remained locked.

"To my understanding, it was a malfunction with the locking system," he said, but did not say who had provided him with that information.

Marvin had been the arresting officer in the case, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Smith is charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment and making terroristic threats, among other charges. At the end of Wednesday's hearing, Elwell raised his bail from $50,000 to $200,000.


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